In my studio, I forbid people to work if they have a down day.

I'm not a person who regrets - it doesn't make me smarter to regret something.

I'm not the type of person who feels bad about things before. I choose what to do at the moment, and I have a very good reason for it; otherwise, I don't do it. If later my feelings change, I should celebrate now by being more wise, not feel bad about before.

Great design is so many things all at the same time. It is emotional, functional, and responsive. It creates an unwritten dialogue, a connection, between itself and those who experience it. It is open to interpretation yet created for a specific purpose. It creates meaning and value.

The very best design, I feel, is that which resonates so deeply that people can't help but discover something within themselves when they see it.

I think what makes me different is that... I am comfortable with expressing my vulnerability. I think designers often want to just put the loveable ideas out there. Ones that are imaginative but not very introspective. It is more rare for a designer to explore his or her disappointments and moments of disillusion and doubt.

I want to create a body of work that is really, deeply important to people. One of the vehicles I use is business.

There are many design companies, but there are few designers who organize their own business and open it up to other designers.

A lot of companies are able to do without design. A few companies are able to do without creativity. A very few. Creativity is crucial to your business.

Often, I'm sitting opposite a client, and I'm thinking, 'How do I convince him to not copy the best-selling product out there?' And sometimes I don't know. Really, it's smarter to be a thief.

A lot of my work is intelligent, a lot of the work is beautiful, but I make ugly things, too.

Beauty is very important, but it's not the most important thing in the world.

I really feel that design has the capacity to communicate, and I really have concentrated on the communication of positive values.

Everything has been done. It's not possible to create something completely new, something that has never been seen before. It's only possible to make new combinations, establish new connections between things we usually take for granted.

I love Milano. Historically, the city is the biggest intellectual design thinking container. It is the cradle of design as well as the hometown of the mothers of its important heroes.

Luxury is not about the things that you own. It is about something that reflects your personal values, something that shows the choices that you have made in your life.

I have 60 people working for me in my studio. That's luxury if you ask me. I just dream. Tell those people that I want a certain thing. Those people will then invest days, and sometimes months, in bringing that idea to life. What more could you ask for? That's luxury for me.

Everything has been thought of before... the real problem is to think of it again.

I wanted to go beyond the sentiments and needs of daily life to create a sense of wonder and find a new space for design.

I like my products to be smart in a technical way but to show the time invested in their creation, too.

Normally I don't care so much about food. I'm more interested in the people I'm with.

I want to make sure people are connected with the future as well as the past.

Food can be a material, and you can use it as a way to project concepts.

M.A.C. stands for makeup, art, and cosmetics. We're about bringing all these worlds together - makeup, design, fashion.

Some people have a concept of design: that it should be without the maker. I have been educated in this way, the traditional way. But I am not naive. I know that we make my things, and that people want them. I am signing them - and I am winking at them.

I like to be the jester - he is the only one the king doesn't question.

Every project has its own logic and parameters. In some objects, functionality is primary, and in others, it is rather inconsequential.

Beauty is only about relationships. Nothing is beautiful on its own.

Nothing grows old faster than the new.

By training, I'm an engineer, but I don't tell anyone because it bores people.

There is no one I'd like to exclude when I design. It's not like I'm trying to design for everyone. Probably can't do that. Yet I try not to exclude anyone.

The one thing we should address is how design can play a role in the psychological durability of objects, to think of how objects can be engineered in a way that they will be good over time.

If we want a world that is truly sustainable, we have to realize that something old can also be perfect. Otherwise, we'll just throw away our yesterday.

When I was a student, my first luxury purchase was a drafting table. It may not seem like a major purchase, but for me, it was the most important thing I could think of to spend my money on.

Being open to the unexpected allows me to bring so much to my craft.

I listen to a variety of music. I like everything from old Arabic music to Portuguese fados.

Why would you spend your life and your time doing something that's insignificant?

Nobody's interested in something that could've been done before.

The things I own are sacred.

I don't just want to create products. I want to reach into people's hearts and minds. I want to create memories.

If something is functional, you no longer think about it. I care about how meaningful things are.

We should make things that people don't want to throw away.

There is always a reason behind things that are made, and if there isn't, there will be one when they travel through the world. The objects of beauty are used to impress, seduce, overwhelm, make money, support identities, and show power or style, among other things.

I think design is the expression of its time and culture.

I want to create a world with objects and surroundings that are human, more romantic, and less sterile.

As humans, we are not so rationalist as we think we are. I think our biggest quality is indeed that we are human, truly human: if our biggest quality would be rationality, we would lose our soul.

For me, true kitsch has nothing to do with irony. It's very honest. It represents what people like, their dreams.

The fundamental dogma of Modernism - that, if the past is irrelevant to the future, then today is irrelevant to tomorrow - has created a throwaway society of disposable objects. That is sick.

When I make chairs, they have legs; they can go anywhere in the world. Interiors are a different responsibility. A house is a representation of where you are, and it has to be right for the place.

The need to express yourself in Los Angeles makes the city so vibrant. If I lived here, it would be lovely to be in a cool new high-rise looking out over a city that is exploding.