Top 108 Quotes & Sayings by Marcel Wanders

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

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

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.

If I look at my own growth, I started in product design. And we grew and created new products, and we were also able to change the idea of design a few times.

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

If I have any basic motivation, it's to inspire people to make their life a masterpiece.

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.

People like their handbag more than their sofa, and I hate it.

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

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

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 like swimming. I like the beach. I like fast cars. I like speedboats.

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.

Design, by definition, is an eco-friendly activity, as its aim is to create objects which are meaningful and durable. Trends always cost resources, but a true designer creates wares which will remain relevant forever.

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

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

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

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

A product can live on one great idea. An interior needs 1,000 great ideas to really live, which makes interior design a whole orchestration of this art of juxtaposition, placement, and combination.

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

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.

To me, relaxing doesn't mean that we play ding-dong songs and look at a wall of bamboo. It's just completely unoriginal.

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.

I wear mascara sometimes, a little lip gloss.

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

Whatever you put around yourself, you will be the mirror of it. Surround yourself with things you love.

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

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.

That word 'fantasy' - I hardly ever hear it in the world of design. And that's very strange. You should hear it a lot. I think fantasy is a very important value that designers and artists should bring to the world.

Nothing grows old faster than the new.

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

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.

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 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 am quite familiar with Dubai and its design scene. I have been a regular visitor for more than 10 years. It is hard to name an area where hospitality, friendship, culture, ambition, and beauty are so highly regarded.

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

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

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.

Food has always been at the frontier of creativity.

I've turned into something of a health nut.

An object should elicit desire, and often it happens not because people need it but because they love it.

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

My design always has a political agenda. When I borrow components from various cultures and juxtapose them in an object, it is a message that co-existence is indeed possible. Design creates an ideal world where different ideas live close to each other in perfect harmony.

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.

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.

Modernism is an outmoded way of thinking about design: it just doesn't reflect the way we live now. It always puts forward this idea that the past is irrelevant to tomorrow - and tomorrow is all that matters. But the past is part of who we are.

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

When I had just finished my degree show, I wrote down the 10 companies that I most wanted to work with, and B&B Italia was on the top of the list.

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

The 'Dezeen's of this world are extremely inspirational but have no realistic dimension any more.

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.

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.

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

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

I collect memories. I look for opportunities to try new things, go to new places, and meet new people all the time.

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

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

I'm 100 percent sure the love and energy we give to a project will end up inside of it. I think it's important that when we work on something, we do it with positive intentions, because this energy will be sensed in the design.

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