Karim Rashid

ed: What did you do last Sunday?

kr: I Had breakfast in bed with my wife (organic waffles with Canadian maple syrup, fresh fruit, Lavazza coffee) then I worked in my office for a few hours, then we worked out at the gym for 2 hours, then we had a late lunch in our favorite place in Chelsea called Cafeteria, then we did the American ritual and went shopping for a few hours, then we went home and did some personal work, grilled salmon with organic salad and a glass of Chilean red cabernet, laid in bed ate and watched a film, and then we made love, and went to dreamland to pink dreamy utopias. I don’t like Mondays.

ed: How important is fashion to you and what’s your favorite piece of clothing?

kr: Clothing is important to me, Fashion is not. I always loved clothes. I remember wanting to choose my own clothes when I was 7. I remember insisting on buying my own clothes starting at the age of 11 from my savings from being a caddy at a golf course. I always was fascinated with golf clothes, because it seemed there was an excuse to wear bright colors, esoteric patterns, and all the fabrics were high performance with interesting casual tailoring – fitted yet allowed great movement. I would observe such great flamboyance of dress on the golf course and then confused that all the rich golfers would return to their day jobs in drab banal dark blue or brown suits. When I was a teenager I was quite crazy about fashion and clothes (I had jobs doing fashion illustration and loved Antonio Lopez’s drawings. I was torn between studying architecture and fashion) and I even got a custom-made pink glam satin shiny fitted suit made for my graduation with purple suede platforms. I dyed my hair pink and wore pink nail polish and took two girls to the prom to emphasize my masculinity even though I dressed so femininely. But to be fashionable is about being a creative self-expressive individual. I think that there is something really exciting, really beautiful, really celebrative of our personal being, and our collective aesthetic culture when we ‘care’ about what we wear and how we look. I get a lot of compliments when I travel because I wear only white or pink, with highly personal colorful accessories. At the same time I believe in being very comfortable and the casual age. I think we should not have uniforms in professions. Why should a banker wear a suit, a lawyer wear a tie? Why should an architect wear black? We should all think casually – be relaxed, not rigid, be individual, not common. My favorite piece of clothing is a Pink suit by J. Lindberg, a fluorescent pinstriped shirt by marc Jacob, a florescent lime long leather coat by Versace, and my new jeans I designed seven7 jeans. I wear Pink because it is optimistic, energetic, fulgent, engaging, positive, and a moxie to the masculine world that dominates our built landscape.

ed: What book or film would you recommend and why?

kr: Without sounding too presumptuous I would recommend my own book ‘Design Your Self’. It is a book that took me 3 years to write – it is an inspiring humorous takes on the way I see the world. It is a philosophical book on contemporary existence. I have so many people tell me it changed their lives. I always really felt as an artist that I just want to inspire people and so this book may have more of an impact than my design work. I like documentaries; films from Scratch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGrchxm_BBU] (about the history of record scratching and hip-hop) and http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3972671039973659170&ei=x2bjSbKcLp2SrALCuYy_BQ&q=documentary+hip+hop&client=safari to Hard bodies a perverse competition of people in a contest touching a car as long as they can until they are the only one left making contact. But I would recommend the film Objectified that was just released. It is important to finally see a good documentary on industrial design since it was such a marginal subject for so long. I also think the world should see the documentary ‘what happened to the electric car?” – because the automotive industry is really backwards, really corrupt, and destroying the planet. I don’t believe today you can have a ‘single’ favorite of anything. So much has been done. My favorite films are either intense dramas about banal lonely lives like American Beauty, American Psycho, Little Children, Paris Texas, Icestorm, etc. or science fiction like 2046, Txh1138, 12 Monkeys, Blade Runner, Alphaville, Tron……………

ed: You have the chance to initiate a cultural revolution. What will you do?

kr: We all know that the way to change this world is education – from the youngest age. But at a young age we must promote and encourage individuality, not conformation. I would also dematerialize this world, have everyone’s existence be accounted for by their fingerprint – no ID’s, no passports, no borders, no boundaries, and no physical money. We would live in a contemporary world where customs, kitsch traditions and old antiquated values don’t exist. I want to live in highly technological and extremely aesthetic world where beauty prevails and human kindness and collectiveness is commonplace; Where peace, love, creativity and intellect are our only desires, where there are no boundaries, no borders, and where the only thing that differentiates us is our individuality, not culture, race, color, or creed.

ed: What is your favorite travel destination and what hotel / resort should everyone visit at least once in their lifetime?

kr: Our country house is a recluse, an escape, and a place so close to the city (actually only 45minutes), yet seems far because it is in a rural setting. When you travel so much for work like I do I, I never want to get on a plane for a vacation. In fact, I must say I have barely traveled for a vacation since opening my office in NYC. I always seemed too busy and found excuses to stay in New York if I had a few days off. Let’s face it, even business travel is awful. Airlines are so backwards. It is a difficult question for me to answer because I design hotels and have spent hundreds of nights in diverse hotels globally. I am very critical and find no hotels perfect. I will say though some of the hotels I like are Unique hotel in San Paolo. The lobby is a phenomenal grandiloquent space, a vertically curved wall and a huge round window in each room is absolutely beautiful. As well; as the unusual landscaping. Alternatively the Hillside Su design Hotel in Antalya, Turkey – a hotel totally in white (every surface) and is very calming, contemporary and sensual. I like the new Mandarin Oriental in Playa del Carmen, Mexico because the service is impeccable and each room is a separate miesian white cube. But most resorts have this ridiculous neo Asian ‘style’, especially spas so I rarely go to them. Why do we associate that style with relaxing? I would consider the most high tech super contemporary spaces a real place to relax. I am not too enamored by the idea of a resort (I feel trapped in them like cruise ships) I get bored being in a singular ‘pseudo’ context, in these faux utopias. And end up being exploited– I generally prefer more urban settings.

ed: What was in your opinion the biggest ever faux pas in architecture / design / art / fashion?

kr: There are several regressive directions taking place. The first is the rococo revival – baroque chandeliers, flower motif decoration, ornate nostalgic ornamentation – turned wooden legs, French bell époque influences, decadence and dandy – I must say that this is only ‘style’ and not design. The problem is that we have blurred the line with style and design. Design is about shaping the future, and style is about appropriating the past. Also there is a strange revival of craft, and we all know that craft is now obsolete and that 90% of the worlds commodity is produced by machine. I wish all designers were looking to the future but I am seeing a plethora of revivalists. I do not like or agree with reinterpretation. We are still seeing so much of this nostalgic derivations, old furniture done in plastic, or variations on classics, which I would ague are just derivatives of the past. It is easy to take something old and make it in a new material or make a subtle spin on it. It is difficult to make something totally new. It is comfortable for people to live with recognized vernaculars, with the security of known signs and languages. The past is easy to copy but the past is pointless and irrelevant in the digital age. We should live, breath, and engage today’s world. A mobile phone is not a copy of an old land line phone, nor is a car, or new sports equipment, or a flat screen TV - therefore all our interior environments should have this same agenda of high performance, new aesthetics, greater comfort, softer more sophisticated spaces. You are alive today so you should surround yourself with physical goods that are a reflection of our milieu. If you buy a car you expect the latest technology, latest performance, intelligence, beauty, comfort, etc. You do not go buy a horse and carriage! So the same should apply to our domestic environment and every aspect of our built environment. I want to rid the world of nostalgia (NO-STALGIA!) so we can enjoy, celebrate and experience the contemporary world without perpetual biases and subjective tastes.

ed: Who has influenced you the most?

kr: My father. He was an artist, a painter a sculptor, a set designer for film and television, but he also designed all our furniture, dresses for my mother, and had no boundaries as a creator. When I was 4 I went sketching with my father in England drawing churches. He taught me to see - he taught me perspective at that age - he taught me that I could design anything and touch all aspects of our physical landscape. He encouraged me to draw what I saw. I became obsessed with drawing eyeglasses, shoes, radios, buildings, luggage, and clothes, throughout my childhood. Then I would say during my studies and upbringing Raymond Lowey, Ettore Sottsass, David Bowie, Bruno Munari, Giorgio Moroder, Jean Baudrillard, Paul Virilio, Charles Eames, Pablo Picasso, Gaetano Pesce, Andre Correges, Alan parsons, Brian Eno, Pierre Cardin, Luigi Colani, Laszlo Moholy Nagy, Pierre Paulin, Verner Panton, Oscar Niemeyer, Victor Papanack, Marshall Macluhan, Cerrone, Ralph Caplan, Alessandro Mendini, Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, Elton John, Victor Vaserly and I could go on and on….

ed: How would you define “cultural identity”

kr: As our world shrinks we become more aware of the world around us, we communicate globally, we mix and in turn we will eventually have one global culture made up of individual objective minds that are not repressed by race, religion, or creed. Designers will become cultural editors and cultural engineers.

ed: When is an idea a “good” idea?

kr: Firstly a good idea means nothing if it is not manifested. We all have good ideas but few of us act on them. Today good design or good idea is based on an plethora of complex criteria; most importantly human experience, social and global issues, economic and political issues, physical and mental interaction, form, vision, sustainability, and a rigorous understanding and desire of contemporary culture.

ed: And last but not least: you are entitled to a single question. What would you ask?

kr: Does God ever wear pink? Kidding. What will it take to make a perfect peaceful world void of desease, suffering, and violence ? P.S. Here are my 10 Commandments 1. Thou shall disseminate beauty everywhere always. 2. Thou shall respect creativity, not money. 3. Thou shall Live today, not in the past. 4. Thou shall continue to learn always. 5. Thou shall Return every e-mail, call, text, message, the same day it arrives regardless of where thou art in the world. 6. Thou shall stay in Equilibrium For everything you buy, you must give away the same thing and never accumulate more than you need or desire. 7. Thou shall do one new philanthropic act per month. 8. Thou shall Always do better than yesterday. 9. Thou shall Love your job or quit - make your hobby your job. 10. Thou shall not just dream, it, thou shall be it.