THOMAS: What’s your latest project? STARCK: My new project is to do projects, not products. I am trying to free myself from the cycle of producing material goods and respond to market demands differently.
How so? By saying “no.” We’ve always been strict, but now we are even more so. We have never worked for arms companies, spirits, tobacco, games, religion, and now for oil companies–with all the wars over oil–and companies that launder money. It’s an enormous loss of income. But that’s OK. We don’t need that much money.
Why did you decide to eliminate so many potential clients? Design first caught our attention with Raymond Loewy, the designer of locomotives, Coca-Cola. In the 1950s he declared, “Ugly is not a good sell.” So he reinvented design to buff up products. But now that vision is totally absurd. The problem isn’t selling–we don’t have the ability to buy more. We need to see the problem from another point of view: Do we really need it? If yes, can we find a way to give this service by delivering more than material goods? One way is ethics.
Ethics? If you’re designing a toothbrush, you could easily make something pretty. Here we think, “Whose mouth is it going in? What sort of life do they live? What society do they live in? What civilization created this society? What sort of animal created this civilization?” Once you’ve gone down that thought path, you must return, and once you do, the toothbrush may not be the same. Hopefully it will be something filled with pleasure, poetry and love.
That’s quite a romantic approach. It’s an exploration of things rich and intelligent instead of the multiplication of weak things.
Why did you take this approach? When I started I was shocked that the objective of design was to create very beautiful objects to be sold to very rich people in very fancy boutiques. Why couldn’t these people see the vulgarity in what they were doing? I wanted to do the opposite. If I had a good idea, I wanted to give it to a million people.
How did you do that? My first success was the Cafe Costes chair in 1982. It retailed for $1,000, and we sold 10,000 a year. I said, “Great, that works, but it’s $1,000.” Meanwhile, you can buy a plastic chair for $10. I’m obstinate. I bothered them, and in the end, I got them to do my plastic chairs. The first was $80. And it was a huge success. In 15 years, I killed the elitist side–the negative side–of design.
So who buys Starck? As the French writer [Jacques] Lacan said, the “nonidiots.” It’s not saying we speak [only] to the intellectuals or the geniuses or the cultivated. We speak simply to the nonidiots. The smart set. People who are profoundly modern, turned completely toward the future, to creation, who are totally responsible but are rebels. Who won’t consume what marketing people push on them.
Why did you do the hotels with Ian Schrager? Ian gave me the opportunity to let people live the Starck experience. In just a few days we can explain a lot of things, and we hope when the guest leaves, something has changed in their view of the world. That we have given them the tools to construct something new themselves, that they will say, “I can do that, too.”'
What design are you most proud of? The next one. Because I am never ever satisfied with what I’ve done.
How do you see yourself? I’m the cleaning lady, who, while dusting, sets something down in a new way, and when you come home, you look at it and say, “Hey, I never thought of that.”
