A biography for Marcel Wandershasn’t been written yet.
“Amsterdam lives and breathes creativity. One moment you walk into a building from the 17th century, and the next you find yourself in a hub of creative start-up companies.”
“Inspiration has become this word that people tend to talk about as something from the outside. The truth is that... it is inside, like a burning fire: it is the feeling of certainty that your life has a meaning and you'll do something important.”
“I love Milano. Historically, the city is the biggest intellectual design thinking container. It is the cradle of design as well as the hometown of the mothers of its important heroes.”
“If I have any basic motivation, it's to inspire people to make their life a masterpiece.”
“M.A.C. stands for makeup, art, and cosmetics. We're about bringing all these worlds together - makeup, design, fashion.”
“The 'Dezeen's of this world are extremely inspirational but have no realistic dimension any more.”
“When I make chairs, they have legs; they can go anywhere in the world. Interiors are a different responsibility. A house is a representation of where you are, and it has to be right for the place.”
“If we want a world that is truly sustainable, we have to realize that something old can also be perfect. Otherwise, we'll just throw away our yesterday.”
“In my studio, I forbid people to work if they have a down day.”
“The fundamental dogma of Modernism - that, if the past is irrelevant to the future, then today is irrelevant to tomorrow - has created a throwaway society of disposable objects. That is sick.”
“Why would you spend your life and your time doing something that's insignificant?”
“Luxury is not about the things that you own. It is about something that reflects your personal values, something that shows the choices that you have made in your life.”
“When I had just finished my degree show, I wrote down the 10 companies that I most wanted to work with, and B&B Italia was on the top of the list.”
“The one thing we should address is how design can play a role in the psychological durability of objects, to think of how objects can be engineered in a way that they will be good over time.”
“When I was a student, my first luxury purchase was a drafting table. It may not seem like a major purchase, but for me, it was the most important thing I could think of to spend my money on.”
“We are buying stuff we know we don't need, and that is a problem we should face in design. It starts with creating an object that transports through time a valuable idea: that it can live forever.”
“My design always has a political agenda. When I borrow components from various cultures and juxtapose them in an object, it is a message that co-existence is indeed possible. Design creates an ideal world where different ideas live close to each other in perfect harmony.”
“You can go to any second-hand store and get an amazing piece - I have pieces from flea markets at home. You don't need to buy throwaway furniture.”
“For me, true kitsch has nothing to do with irony. It's very honest. It represents what people like, their dreams.”
“The very best design, I feel, is that which resonates so deeply that people can't help but discover something within themselves when they see it.”