Looking for innovative solutions for living is what SR Hughes Design Group has always done best and continues to do. The company constantly seeks new ideas and inspiration, which is what keeps them going back to Salone Internazionale del Mobile.
The annual, worldwide furniture show was held April 12-17 at the 50-acre Rho Fairgrounds in Milan, Italy. Brian Hughes has attended the show for the past decade and says that with it having more than 2,500 exhibitors displaying modern, chic designs for inspiration, the company has plenty of reasons to continue to attend.
“We’re trying to comb the world for the best kind of answers to contemporary living,” he says. “Sometimes, I get on the plane and think, ‘Can I really go and still be caught sideways?’ And it always happens. The ideas and the showmanship and the way it is done, the way the city lives and breathes it, is amazing. I just don’t know anything else like it in the world.”
Hughes’ grandmother, Sarah Rodgers Hughes, and two aunts began the design group more than 30 years ago. They asked Brian to join them about 12 years back when they were looking to reinvent the showroom. He says the company is “about being able to offer things to people in Oklahoma that they hadn’t had the opportunity to be exposed to on the local level.”
SR Hughes outfits a variety of customers.
“It goes across the spectrum of who we are and what we offer,” Hughes adds.
The design firm and Salone are about innovative and creative solutions for living, he says.
“It means you’re no longer constrained to contemporary or traditional,” Hughes explains. “It means you’re using interesting ideas to help people live the way they want to live or work the way they want to work. It isn’t restricted to indoor or outdoor.”
Attending the show is as much about getting ideas as it is about seeing the new trends in person and thus having less of a skewed opinion of them. Milan is the design leader of many things, according to Hughes, and the people there teach how to stop and take notice.
“It is what leads and the rest of the world follows,” Hughes says. “You usually see it there first. We don’t always jump on a trend. We consider carefully what things are, how they work, why we love them, and we wait to make sure we’re emotionally connected to them. We at least know what the trends are. It is nice to understand the trends.”
The showroom is open to patrons from 10:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. The company is located at 410 S. Peoria, Suite 100 in Tulsa. For more information about SR Hughes visit www.srhughes.com or contact 918.742.5515.
