SALON: You make furniture for famous brands, fashion accessories for the LACOSTE company, and also design the interiors of five-star hotels. What is luxury, luxury lifestyle for you?

- The meaning of luxury - in increased comfort. A luxury car has a much more comfortable, comfortable interior than an inexpensive car. But luxury is also a matter of status. Since I personally don’t worry about my status at all, I don’t seek to surround myself with luxurious things.

S: When you create your things, do you think first of all about comfort or form?

- The idea of ​​comfort is outdated, because comfort has become a prerequisite for the designer. If things are uncomfortable, they are not produced. For me, the main thing in design is my idea of ​​how people live and how to make their lives better. I am a writer who tells stories. Only I express my ideas with the help of forms, colors, material.

S: Tell one of your stories ...

- I recently did for the company FORWARD armchair with footrest Nouvelle vague. Creating it, I thought that in the mind of a Western person, the idea of ​​comfort is related to the category of volume. A comfortable sofa is a large sofa, a comfortable car is a big machine. I wanted to show that this connection is illusory, so I tried to bring as much emptiness as possible into the design and chairs, and footrests. Similar story with the Meridiana chair for the factory DRIADE. At first, I was going to repeat the wire chair of Harry Bertoy, in the 50s, only using plastic threads instead of wire. But in the end I decided to make the basis of solid plastic - it turned out a chair made of emptiness.

S: And, for example, at the chair Yuki, created for the factory ZANOTTAhave a story

-  Yuki - имя моего японского друга, для которого я спроектировал это кресло. Прототип я разработал для японской компании E&Y, а затем инженеры ZANOTTA improved the design. As a result, the chair turned out even better than in the original version. It is absolutely timeless - a similar chair could appear ten years ago, and nowadays, and five years later.