A biography for Peter Marinohasn’t been written yet.
“Publicity doesn't really get me anything. Clients are not going to hire me for a $100 million building because I have a brand. They really want the product.”
“When I opened Chanel in London, they were happy. People would go, 'Oh, I just came in to see it. It's so beautiful.' And you leave with a positive attitude toward the brand. Now, you don't really get that online. You don't go, like, 'Wow.'”
“The French use gardens to show grandeur and the English to show how things have endured for hundreds of years, but for me, they're all about fantasy.”
“My name is on the door, and I care very much about the design that gets put out. I'm sorry, but it has to be my way. You learn that by working for people like I. M. Pei. You think he isn't a design tyrant? Is Calvin Klein a tyrant? When it came to his dresses, he had to be.”
“One of my first fashion clients was Calvin Klein. We did his first freestanding stores. He was very exact and precise. But talk about high-fashion people who brand themselves!”
“I am very happy working for my European brands. My legacy isn't going to be a museum. Yet I would be very good at it. It's so painful. It's like everything - the same old guys - Herzog & de Meuron, Frank Gehry, Renzo Piano - they don't pick original people.”
“It's a good marriage because each of us is what we are, allows the other one to be themselves, and appreciates each other for the right reason. You know, it's rare that you'll find two people who don't try to change the other person and let everyone be what they are.”
“I like more the fact that I like to think out of the box. Thinking out of the box goes along with dressing out of the box and living out of the box.”
“What frustrates me is florists who put everything at the same size on the table. I like it when there's mountains and valleys.”
“We have a thousand hydrangea plants bordering the house, and they were all supposed to be pink, but a handful of them keep turning purple.”
“I don't talk about myself in the third person. When I start doing that, you'll know I'm having an out-of-body experience.”
“All bronzes are made to be touched. Bronze is a sensual 'living' material. The sweat and oil of your palms adds to the patination.”
“Not enough people enjoy working with color, which delights and inspires me.”
“I work 12 hours a day, seven days a week - and I love it. I'm creative. I feel fulfilled. I'm from a solidly lower-middle-class background; I'm not from the world that I'm in now. So I appreciate it a lot. I've really got a rich, full life.”
“That was really the Fifties for me - that whole spirit of flicking the paint on the canvas.”
“In 1991, if someone came in with a $1 million budget for a boutique, I would have fainted. Nobody spent even half that. But now, the bar has risen very high.”
“Ginza! Where I've done two Chanel towers and Louis Vuitton and Dior stores. I just feel at home there.”
“If something's a high-margin product, I understand its importance to the store.”
“I've benefited enormously from an arts education and a music education in New York. When they cut the programs for funding, I was devastated.”
“If I need a pair of tennis shorts, I'll buy them online. I don't really care. Not going to go and try on a pair and see how my bum looks. Who cares? But for things that you care about - I mean, a jacket and a pair of trousers, you've got to try them on.”