ANOUSKA HEMPEL

I buy the best fabrics from small mills in Italy. That is the basis for my clothes.

I love to get on the road, but I also think arriving is such a thrill. Turning up at the train station in Mumbai, for example, to see people hanging off all the wonderful old carriages. It's extraordinary - everyone sitting with their chickens on their laps, moving forward but not going anywhere fast.

Comfort? If a choice has to be made between style and comfort, style wins every time.

Everything I've ever done has been because of travel. Right from leaving Australia to where I am today - it's all been about exchanging different points of view. The most important lesson I've learnt is to look and listen to what's happening around you.

I get up in the morning, look around, arrange and rearrange things, and imagine how I might like them to look. Why doesn't everybody?

Good people can get you out of a thousand problems with charm and kindness.

Acting was fun for a while. I loved every minute of the really good things I did but probably wasn't as good as I should have been.

Work's a way of life. It's the way you live; it's what you do, and it's how it is. It's not work. It's a lifestyle. It's life. It's what one does. You can't not work.

England used to be known for making beautiful things. Then we became the rag trade, known for our street fashions, which were picked up around the world. I want us to be recognized for quality. We have the hands to make the clothes. What we need is the motivation.

It is not me who is to be noticed. It is my work.

When building in a place that already has a dominant style, it's important to behave yourself. Look around; refer to what you see. In the mountains above Salzburg, I saw charming chalets and wildflower meadows. The chalets are cozy - I don't do cozy. The meadows are in a soft disarray - I don't do soft, and I don't do disarray. I do order.

My father wanted a boy. I was supposed to be called Albert. That was probably the beginning of why things got so complicated, because I wasn't a boy.

A house must be bedded in the landscape. They both have to work together. In and out, every view from a window has to be sensational. Every view into the house must be the same to ensure continuity.

India. From Goa to Kerala and Mumbai, it gets me every time. It's the food, the people, and the colours. The magical atmosphere and the accepting nature of the locals.

Sure, I'm hyperactive. I make my staff a bit hyper, too, but motivating someone else is what gives me a buzz.

I'd always been acutely sensitive to my surroundings - and aware that I could make them rather than just observe them. So I began by designing interiors for myself, for friends, for clients - I just felt that I'd discovered my element, and those who really looked at what I was doing liked it - and the rest followed.

I'm never short of inspiration. There are always new ideas - and new adventures.

I feel that, historically, the Art Deco period has the most resonance for me. As a person, it has to be the plucky Clara Bow, the heroine of American silent movies of the 1920s. She embodied feminine dressing mixed with men's style. All this then evolved into the exquisite style and simplicity of Coco Chanel.

It was the corner sweet-shop in Australia that first piqued my interest in interior design. I went into this space with a mixture of apprehension and excitement as a child. It was filled, floor to ceiling, with the most incredible rounded glass bowls filled to the brim with bonbons, buttons, and sweets.

I always like to read something romantic about the place I'm visiting.

Being a rather second-rate actress, I finally thought, 'I'd rather be a designer.' I knew I could make things look good.

The champagne tastes the same if you're sitting bolt upright or sunk back into a sofa, so you might as well be upright, because you look better.

From the age of five, I was organizing everybody's everything. If I didn't like the way it looked, I'd rearrange it. From a very early age, I saw life from my point of view.

Design, refine and repeat, and keep learning all the way along. It sounds bland and pedestrian, but in fact, it's the reverse.

I think if you have an eye and the ability and the confidence as a designer, you can turn your hand to anything.