created and run by Elisabetta Rizzato founder ITALIANBARK®
I know it. Just hearing the word "trend" makes you roll your eyes. And that's fair.
Trends, as we mostly know them today, have turned into pure marketing, a byproduct of social media: something that suddenly appears everywhere, gets replicated endlessly, and then quickly fades. This way of looking at trends is exhausting and ultimately pointless.
But the word trend actually means something else. According to the dictionary, a trend is a direction of change.
At TRENDBARK, this is exactly what we observe, with a specific focus on how the spaces we live in are changing. Trends happen because taste changes, markets evolve, technologies shift, and the way we live transforms. And today it has become increasingly difficult to navigate all of this: information is everywhere, often contradictory, and coming from every direction.
TRENDBARK is a tool to face change in a more conscious and inspired way, without being overwhelmed by the anxiety of always having to "keep up."
It helps you understand what, among everything you see on the market, actually matters to your work. What can be useful, what can be left aside, and which themes, even outside the design world, are worth paying attention to now because they may become important in the near future.
I designed TRENDBARK with the perfect combination of filtered insights & in person interaction, to give you what really matters in a way that is deep but also light and smart to use.
Monthly Foresight Tool
An evolving research space with my notes, observations, references, and downloadable visuals on interiors, design, and living spaces, updated every month. Not a newsletter. A working tool.
Annual Milan Design Week Trendbook
A curated reading of Milan Design Week through colors, materials, forms, styles, and innovations, filtering what can become a real and lasting direction. First published in 2017. The most established part of the platform, from 2026 available only for the members.
Milan Design Week Members Hub
A curated guide to the fair: previews, must-sees, personal routes, and live trend signals as the week unfolds
1:1 Mentoring Sessions
Dedicated time to work through your specific projects: evaluate a direction, clarify a material choice, open new possibilities. Direct access to my research process, applied to your work.
Year-end Live Webinar
A broader look at the following two years, connecting signals, aesthetics, and cultural shifts to help orient your focus and priorities.
The structure is intentionally simple.
It combines a monthly update - an evolving tool with my notes, observations, downloadable images, and references on interiors, design, and living spaces - with optional 1:1 mentoring sessions to clarify projects, evaluate scenarios, and open new possibilities.
It includes the annual Milan Design Week Trendbook, our longest-standing publication (first launched in 2017), which reads MDW through colors, materials, forms, styles, and innovations, filtering what can become a real and lasting direction.
A year-end webinar completes the cycle, offering a broader look at the following two years to help orient focus and priorities.
A perspective that starts in Italy and Europe but goes further, including on-site observations from Far East Asia: a necessary expansion of perspective today more than ever.
You stop filtering alone.
Every week there's more to process: fairs, social media, magazines, brand launches, AI-generated trends that look like everything and mean nothing. TRENDBARK Studio replaces twenty scattered sources with one curated, structured research space: updated every month, built around what actually matters for interior design professionals.
Less noise. More signal. More time to do the work.
You see directions before they become obvious.
The value of trend intelligence isn't in following. It's in reading early, by understanding where materials, aesthetics, and client expectations are heading before the market catches up.
The Milan Design Week Trendbook and the monthly foresight tool are built around this: not what's popular now, but what's building momentum and why. So you can design with a direction, not just a reference.
You present your choices with more authority.
This is one of the outcomes that surprises members most.
When you can explain why you're choosing a material, a color direction, a spatial concept, by grounding it in a broader cultural and technological context, your proposal carries more weight.
TRENDBARK gives you the language and the structure to do that, in client presentations, in project documentation, in the way you position your studio.
You work on your actual projects, not in the abstract.
The 1:1 mentoring sessions are the most direct part of the membership, yet the most underestimated.
It's not a coaching call. It's dedicated time to work through your specific situation: a direction you're unsure about, a client brief that needs a stronger concept, a material choice you want to pressure-test against where things are heading.
Thirteen years of on-site research at international fairs and real work, applied to your project. That's what a session looks like.
You stop working in isolation.
TRENDBARK Studio is also am international community of designers, architects, and studios , professionals who are asking the same questions, working in different markets, and seeing things from angles your local context can't offer.
A cultural investment as much as a professional tool.
An investment in learning how to look, how to select, and how to give meaning to your choices -something that inevitably reflects in the quality and longevity of the work you produce.
"I found the monthly reports particularly helpful when used in combination with the Colour Trendbook.
We are mixing them with our separate research on the specific project to create unique concepts.
Our commercial clients appreciate our effort to look at Global Trends and how they influence the needs and tastes of their target audience."
Martina P. / Founder & Director, A Designer at Heart Ltd - London, UK
"I am a member already quite some time, I appreciate Elisabetta's work very much as it gives me fruitful information about Macro, Color & Style trends. As I visit a lot of fairs & events myself being a freelance designer, it is always very helpful to see if somebody else has a similar impression of what is going on in the interior market. Thanks for your excellent work!"
Anja T. / Textile Designer - Germany
"As an independent designer working across markets, staying informed felt increasingly chaotic. I was constantly collecting too much but without a clear sense of it all. The Trendbooks are visually rich yet focused, and the mentoring session with Elisabetta helped me see exactly how to translate insights into design direction for my clients."
Francesca M. / Interior Designer & Stylist, Milan
"Joining TRENDBARK has been one of the best decisions I have ever made! When I first enrolled, I was interested in learning about upcoming trends so I could use them as a reference to renovate my home, which I plan to sell in the near future. What I appreciate the most about being part of this program is the private mentorship session offered by Elisabetta. This offering alone is worth the entire cost of the program."
Claudia V. / Freelancer - New Jersey, US
This trend program is personally curated by me, Elisabetta Rizzato. I'm an architect and trend strategist, but you may have met me online during these last years under the nickname @italianbark, a blog I created back in 2013 that became an international reference point for all things related to interiors, design, colour, and trends. In 2022 I created TRENDBARK, a platform for trend intelligence meant to be practical and useful, as well as insightful, created specifically for the interior and design industry. My membership is my golden group, where I share the best insights and what's happening much before everywhere else, as well as the same approach I use in brand consulting.
Alongside the membership, my work also takes shape through workshops, talks, and live sessions, including CASACROMIA, my colour workshop for design professionals, and speaking engagements at international design events.
Everything included:
Monthly foresight tool ( interactive notes, observations, references, downloadable visuals )
Milan Design Week Members Hub
Annual Milan Design Week Trendbook + Seminar
1:1 Mentoring Sessions
Year-end live webinar
Exclusive discounts on all other TRENDBARK publications
Access starts immediately after joining.
No. STUDIO PLAN is single-user, personal use. Brands/teams should join BRANDS PLAN, that gives multi-access + commercial license.
Once you have purchased the plan you prefer, your will receive an email confirmation plus a second email with all the instructions ( remember also to check in the spam folder). The way to access the materials is super easy, through a members-only login area within TRENDBARK website.
The annual plan offers a significant cost advantage compared to what it used to be a monthly payment option, that . For this reason, refunds are not available in case of cancellation. All details are available in the Policy page here.
TRENDBARK was created by the founder of ITALIANBARK® , transforming years of trend reporting into a structured and accessible foresight program for professionals and brands.