It’s difficult to say what seduced me more: the Alpine crispness, the art, or the crowd who moved through luxury the way others move through supermarkets.

NOMAD, the travelling boutique art fair, has been circling the globe for nearly a decade.

Boutique enough to unfold inside a villa. Lavish enough to justify a helicopter landing pad overhead. Between February 12 and 15, 2026, in St. Moritz, it housed around 25 galleries. Free entry with prior registration. Three floors of exhibitions, with food and drink tucked stylishly into the ground and lower level. I braced myself for the usual alpine inflation – yet a large latte with

extra milk was 5 CHF. In St. Moritz terms, it qualifies as democratically priced.

At Frieze, everything expands at once: the number of works, the brightness of the lights, the density of people, the urgency of attention. The experience becomes a kind of visual and social crescendo.

Certainly impressive, but also overwhelming.

The more there is to see, the harder it becomes to truly look. Individual works begin to compete rather than converse, and even the most striking pieces risk dissolving into a wider, almost continuous stream of stimuli.

What many collectors admit only in private is that the so-called “Art fair fatigue” is real. The marathon viewing sessions.

The fluorescent lighting. The social choreography

of being seen seeing art. 

At a certain scale, abundance stops feeling luxurious and starts feeling transactional. Repetition creeps in. Quantity edges out quality. Aesthetics threaten to overpower substance.

It’s not out of context.

According to late-2025 market reports by Forbes and Business Insider,

wealthy consumers are increasingly allocating their money toward

experiences – travel, private aviation, fine dining –

while traditional tangible goods stagnate.

Art and design rank only fourth among luxury impulses.

We are, of course, speaking about the demographic

that can afford anything at any time.

This is where NOMAD curation

swept me off my feet.

There was no cafeteria-style chaos.

Instead, a zero-waste pop-up by London’s pioneering restaurant Silo, founded by Douglas McMaster, TIME’s Most Influential Climate Leader and World Class Chef, sustainability not as a trend, but as a structure.

Closed-loop gastronomy. Local sourcing. A mission embedded

in the menu. Not catering. Curation.

The entry room was wrapped in red: red floor, red ceiling, red desk, red everything. The NOMAD logo glowed in red neon. The main door aligned theatrically with the entrance to the Armani exhibition –

free of charge, yet charged with symbolism.

In a town dense with prospective

buyers and discreet bank accounts,

even a regular visitor could

feel red-carpet significant.

Those details matter.

Armani’s “Through the Looking Glass,” curated by Abby Bangster, was described as intimate, balanced, and quietly expressive.

And may I add, expensive. Interestingly, those same words could describe the fair itself.

NOMAD did not overwhelm.

It choreographed.

Of course, one could argue that heavy pre-selection is a cognitive shortcut. In an era where we scroll instead of study, are we outsourcing taste to curators? Perhaps.

But in the age of the attention economy – where focus is fragmented and monetized – protecting a viewer’s mental space becomes

its own luxury.

The real indulgence is no longer access. It is attention.

And it seems to me that NOMAD understands this.

As someone who has not attended previous NOMAD editions, I cannot comment on its full evolution.

But one thing feels certain: the future of art fairs will belong to those who curate not only works, but worlds.

And I, even as a viewer rather than a collector for now, am here for that curated competitiveness, hoping it continues

to produce not just transactions, but moments.

 © perediza 2026