Tadashi Yanai Quotes

I design for real people. I think of our customers all the time. There is no virtue whatsoever in creating clothing or accessories that are not practical.

I don't design for myself. I design something keeping in mind that it has to please a lot of women.

Furniture is meant to be used and enjoyed.

The products people like best start with function and wind up with look.

Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it's this veneer - that the designers are handed this box and told, 'Make it look good!' That's not what we think design is. It's not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

I want people to love to sit in my chairs. You gotta want the people to buy it because they love it.

It's great to design a beautiful, modern, sleek home like you'd see in a magazine. But if it doesn't suit your lifestyle, it's really wasted.

Any item in your wardrobe should satisfy one of two criteria: utility and joy.

The architect should strive continually to simplify; the ensemble of the rooms should then be carefully considered that comfort and utility may go hand in hand with beauty.

Design must reflect the practical and aesthetic in business but above all... good design must primarily serve people.

I'd rather have a house that's nice but usable.

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

Denim should always be comfortable; jeans should protect you. They are workwear.

A perfect handbag is both functional and stylish. Of course you want to look cool, but you also want a bag that is going to work with you, not against you.

Design means being good, not just looking good.

I hope the average woman feels she needs practicality but with a little bit of fantasy. Otherwise, it's just not fashion.

Form must never trump function. Some objects are made to look so smooth, you don't know where to pick them up or how to turn them on. If I'm designing a garlic press or cheese grater, I need my hand to fit comfortably on it. I like to know, instinctively, how to use it.

We should work for simple, good, undecorated things, but things which are in harmony with the human being and organically suited to the little man in the street.

Good design to me is both appearance and functionality together. It's the experience that makes it good design.

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

Design must be functional, and functionality must be translated into visual aesthetics without any reliance on gimmicks that have to be explained.

I think that the point of being an architect is to help raise the experience of everyday living, even a little. Putting a window where people would really like one. Making sure a shaving mirror in a hotel bathroom is at the right angle. Making bureaucratic buildings that are somehow cheerful.

The clothes have to perform for me.

If you have to design something, choose things that we need as opposed to frivolous things that we might just want for a month or two for bragging rights.

'Commercial' is not the word that has to be said only by CEOs. It has to be something that is maybe the essence of design, because design has some sort of art in it and creation, but it's also some object that you have to use. There is also this pragmatic end to it.