In tech, people want an object for what's inside it, what it does. You need to make a defensive design that people won't walk away from. A chair is aggressive - you want a customer to choose it from many others.

I wear mascara sometimes, a little lip gloss.

So much in design is presented as a big miracle when it's just a repetition of what's been happening for 80 years.

Function is fundamental to design, of course. If something doesn't work, it's a bad product, and I certainly get frustrated by things that aren't functional. But there has to be more than function. A house has to function, but if that's all it does, you don't love it.

A good gift celebrates the relationship between the giver and the receiver. When you open that box, you feel like, 'Wow, you really understood me.' At the same time, you think this gift could come only from that person.

We are buying stuff we know we don't need, and that is a problem we should face in design. It starts with creating an object that transports through time a valuable idea: that it can live forever.

Whether or not you like an object, it's the product of an individual person making decisions about things. That's what makes it interesting.

Designers have been uncreative and very arrogant. They need to listen to people. People have always wanted more exciting, interesting design, but we designers didn't see it.

I have been a designer all my life, and design, for me, is to share love and trust and show the future in a beautiful way. I have worked on this principle all my life.

I like to find areas where design has not yet gone.

My mom and dad had a store, and sometimes people would return broken stuff. I'd take it apart and reassemble it. At 16, I really understood the architecture of things.

I've always liked the idea of making things that last forever, not necessarily in the sense of being unbreakable, but more psychologically permanent. Most people throw stuff away not because it's broken but because their relationship with that object is broken.

When you look at the work you do every day, you do see things. But if you look at the work you did for 25 years, suddenly you start to get a more complete picture.

The works we do in Moooi are very diverse, very eclectic. That's how we like it.

I think architects design outside in. Or they design basically outside. They don't get in the building anymore.

Humor has the tendency to be funny once. If I tell you a joke, we're going to have a big laugh. But the second time I tell the joke, it's going to be a bit strange, and the third time you're going to ask if there's something wrong with me. So I am very cautious with jokes, but there is a lightness in my work.

I like transparency. I love to have views throughout the house.

If you acquire things, you have to let them go.

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.