Publicity doesn't really get me anything. Clients are not going to hire me for a $100 million building because I have a brand. They really want the product.
I don't sell anything. So, I have a personal image, but I think that's because I'm from an art background, and I'm an artist, and I think most artists do have personal images. I consider myself more in that category of the way an artist had a look.
If I need a pair of tennis shorts, I'll buy them online. I don't really care. Not going to go and try on a pair and see how my bum looks. Who cares? But for things that you care about - I mean, a jacket and a pair of trousers, you've got to try them on.
I loathe when architects only analyze architecture in intellectual, nonvisual ways. I really love direct response, and that's very pop. I don't want to discuss abstract transparencies with a bunch of kooks.
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!
I don't talk about myself in the third person. When I start doing that, you'll know I'm having an out-of-body experience.
Anytime I see an unusual combination of colors or patterns or texture, I buy it.
I collect art like other people eat pizza. I can't get enough of it. I need a constant source of inspiration.
I always look for inspiration, and the creativity of artists is an essential element to my life, my work, and my happiness.
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.
In 1991, if someone came in with a $1 million budget for a boutique, I would have fainted. Nobody spent even half that. But now, the bar has risen very high.
Creating work for the time that one lives in means no retro thinking. It can and hopefully does mean timelessness.
Motorcycle garb is the way I looked to Warhol. Then came the Armani suits.
People in Shanghai make a lot more money than the farmers in the rice paddies. The rice-paddy farmers are not buying Louis Vuitton bags, but the upwardly mobile ones in Shanghai, who are all working in Wall Street-type firms, are infinitely better-dressed than people in the West. Their women take this fashion thing seriously.
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 have this 'Alice in Wonderland' idea in my head that a garden should be a place of wonderment.
We have a thousand hydrangea plants bordering the house, and they were all supposed to be pink, but a handful of them keep turning purple.
If something's a high-margin product, I understand its importance to the store.
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.
Koishikawa Korakuen Garden - one of Tokyo's oldest Japanese gardens, and one of the best spots for viewing the cherry blossoms.
