Postcard from... Milan

For those who aren't thrilled by the thought of avant-garde light-fittings, Milan's Triennale design museum is providing a winter show with a bit more bite.

The crowd-pleasing exhibition that opened last Friday titled "Dracula", is dedicated to all things relating to the Lord of the Undead. Given the number of nocturnal people in Italy's fashion capital who are thin, pale, dress in black and don't eat very much, the exhibition may have found its natural home.

The show, which runs until 24 March, celebrates the 100th anniversary of the death of the creature's creator, Bram Stoker. Dracula, the classic gothic tale of a nobleman in Romania's Carpathian mountains who achieved eternal life by resting in his coffin during the day and drinking human blood at night, was published in 1897. At the exhibit, overseen by Alef di Pietro Allegretti in collaboration with the Triennale and Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, more than 100 works combine to link the myths that preceded the novel with the vampire tales and films that came after it.

Part of the show is dedicated to lady vampires – described as "a misogynist invention of the 18th and 19th centuries thought up by men who feared independent women". That doesn't sound unlike Italy in the 21st Century.