When East meets West, amazing design happens. L'Alahambra rug is a marriage of the clean line and simplicity of Western graphic design meets the complexity and beauty of Eastern pattern.

You forget how many people watch TV until you come into a town like this. Everybody knows you, and I'm always humbled, especially when there are 500 little kids who all have their hair done like yours and want to be designers.

It's not about doing over the living room of someone who has bad taste in color. This is about restoring historic buildings and instilling pride in a community, which can be done through designing new public spaces and social gathering spots.

That was always my frustration with so many of these shows, because design is not an ambush... it's a relationship. You have to know how people move and live and work to be able to design for them.

I'm opening a store at the end of the month in the New York meatpacking district. I'm launching a line of bedding this summer, and I am writing a book that will be out next January.

I think we typically, as Northerners, stereotype what the South is in so many negative ways. We kind of forget all the beautiful things that they contribute to make this country a country.

I'm a designer, I love it, and I haven't worked this hard to do bad work.