Peter Marino
Peter Marino

The French use gardens to show grandeur and the English to show how things have endured for hundreds of years, but for me, they're all about fantasy.

Peter Marino
Peter Marino

If you want to come up with a really original design idea, and you want to capture a whole new design direction, perhaps the best way to arrive at that is not by acting and thinking and doing like everybody else. That's all.

Peter Marino
Peter Marino

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.'

Peter Marino
Peter Marino

I do really modern with materials that are so luxurious that they're, like, baroque.

Peter Marino
Peter Marino

I like more the fact that I like to think out of the box. Thinking out of the box goes along with dressing out of the box and living out of the box.

Peter Marino
Peter Marino

Architects have big egos. We like to think we're creating the pyramids and they're going to be around for thousands of years. And it's a joke because they're not even going to last our lifetime. I built a home for umpteen gazillion dollars on a gorgeous piece of property in Palm Beach, and 11 years later somebody else bought it and knocked it down.

Peter Marino
Peter Marino

My parents spent a lot of money so I wouldn't sound like I came from Queens. I went to speech class.

Peter Marino
Peter Marino

Nine out of nine architects start with a sketch, and then they say, 'What should we make it out of?' I start from the bottom up - what should it be made out of - and then I worry about what should it look like. The material, the color of the material, the way it feels, and the way you respond to it is every bit as valid as the form or the shape.

Peter Marino
Peter Marino

All bronzes are made to be touched. Bronze is a sensual 'living' material. The sweat and oil of your palms adds to the patination.

Peter Marino
Peter Marino

I'm really a fighter against modernism equaling brutalism.

Peter Marino
Peter Marino

That was really the Fifties for me - that whole spirit of flicking the paint on the canvas.

Peter Marino
Peter Marino

Ginza! Where I've done two Chanel towers and Louis Vuitton and Dior stores. I just feel at home there.

Peter Marino
Peter Marino

Universal human characteristics are a good base for great art.

Peter Marino
Peter Marino

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?'

Peter Marino
Peter Marino

I believe that women would crawl across broken glass to get a cool pair of shoes.

Peter Marino
Peter Marino

I am very happy working for my European brands. My legacy isn't going to be a museum. Yet I would be very good at it. It's so painful. It's like everything - the same old guys - Herzog & de Meuron, Frank Gehry, Renzo Piano - they don't pick original people.

Peter Marino
Peter Marino

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.

Peter Marino
Peter Marino

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.'

Peter Marino
Peter Marino

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.

Peter Marino
Peter Marino

Design-wise, I look at everything. If I don't personally design it, I'll review it. I'm kind of creative director of the firm.