Design is defined by light and shade, and appropriate lighting is enormously important.

Beige is atmosphere. It's bisque, it's ivory, it's cream, it's stone, it's toast, it's cappuccino. It;s well, it's magic.

Decorating is not a look, it's a point of view.

Flair-a primitive kind of style-may be innate, but I think knowledgeable taste is learned, the result of travel, experience, living, education.

Make your home as comfortable and attractive as possible and then get on with living. There's more to life than decorating.

So many young decorators are trying to reinvent the wheel, and the results are sometimes very dubious. They're striving to do things that have never been done before. Quite often it is done without authority, without knowledge, and without a background in taste. They need to be educated about the past, and they need a richer vocabulary.

The essence of interior design will always be about people and how they live. It is about the realities of what makes for an attractive, civilized, meaningful environment, not about fashion or what's in or what's out. This is not an easy job.