There's a very important aspect to all my work, now more than ever, which is tying the interior design and architecture with the art.
I want to be the first person to animate bags - everything done for handbags bores me to tears - I want to make it more playful.
Motorcycle garb is the way I looked to Warhol. Then came the Armani suits.
I've benefited enormously from an arts education and a music education in New York. When they cut the programs for funding, I was devastated.
My father's house was on East 55th Street on 1st and 2nd Avenues. I'm fifth-generation Marino in the East 50s - I live on 57th Street. I can't be more East 50s.
I do really modern with materials that are so luxurious that they're, like, baroque.
Koishikawa Korakuen Garden - one of Tokyo's oldest Japanese gardens, and one of the best spots for viewing the cherry blossoms.
I believe that women would crawl across broken glass to get a cool pair of shoes.
All bronzes are made to be touched. Bronze is a sensual 'living' material. The sweat and oil of your palms adds to the patination.
One of my first fashion clients was Calvin Klein. We did his first freestanding stores. He was very exact and precise. But talk about high-fashion people who brand themselves!
My name is on the door, and I care very much about the design that gets put out. I'm sorry, but it has to be my way. You learn that by working for people like I. M. Pei. You think he isn't a design tyrant? Is Calvin Klein a tyrant? When it came to his dresses, he had to be.
I simply loathe the crude 1960s distinctions between commerce and art. For me, Warhol and pop obliterated all of those separations - that was the whole point of the Brillo Boxes and Campbell's Soup Cans. And believe it or not, in 2009, moronic journalists are still saying to me, 'Your work is so commercial.'
I got into architecture via fine arts, and I was a sculptor myself, and I have always involved artists in my projects. When I say 'involved,' I mean I always bring artists in at the beginning projects before they're built and say, 'Will you do a room? Will you do a sculpture floating in mid-air? Will you make a chimney? Will you do something?'
Ginza! Where I've done two Chanel towers and Louis Vuitton and Dior stores. I just feel at home there.
What frustrates me is florists who put everything at the same size on the table. I like it when there's mountains and valleys.
I work 12 hours a day, seven days a week - and I love it. I'm creative. I feel fulfilled. I'm from a solidly lower-middle-class background; I'm not from the world that I'm in now. So I appreciate it a lot. I've really got a rich, full life.
It's a good marriage because each of us is what we are, allows the other one to be themselves, and appreciates each other for the right reason. You know, it's rare that you'll find two people who don't try to change the other person and let everyone be what they are.
The Peninsula - it's a combination of great service and good design.
When I opened Chanel in London, they were happy. People would go, 'Oh, I just came in to see it. It's so beautiful.' And you leave with a positive attitude toward the brand. Now, you don't really get that online. You don't go, like, 'Wow.'
I'm really a fighter against modernism equaling brutalism.
