On Working with Clients
"I think that there are two sorts of clients: One who comes to you for what you do—which is always amazing—and then someone who has their own opinions and ideas.
When I sit down with a client, it's less about finding a common ground and more about helping them edit. And when to say, 'as much as I love this, it's not going to fit into this home.'"
On His Creative Process
"I'm really logical. I've found that, in the past, if it becomes too organic you feel kind of lost and you can go off forever. So I really like to start off with a floor plan then with materials. With those two things you have a good sense of how the space works and how it's going to feel. From there I plug in the furnishings and everything else."
On Designing Retail Spaces
"I like to start with something super concrete—that's what I love doing retail work. You start with a list of product, product categories and a list of SKUs and what you need to fit into a space. I start it like a puzzle with a floor plan and then I like to work it off of colors and fabrics and go from there."
On Fur and Taxidermy
"It's part of what I do; it’s not merely an add on. If you look through my work you won’t often find prints, and you won’t often find color in the traditional sense. My use of fur and animal skin is really my layering in of color, texture and pattern.
If the space needs something, someone else might say, 'what about stripes?' For me, it’s always, 'what about python?' or 'ostrich might look awesome here!'"
On Color
"A lot of what I do is a wash; even if what I do is a color, it's dusty, it’s normally grey, black, white or super neutral. You never really see these wild prints and fabrics."
On Making a Statement
"What I try to do a lot of the time is make one statement and make it really big. It's always been about making confident choices and making them in a way that there is no room for interpretation of what the statement is. If a client really loves the idea of animal skin, then why don't we put an entire zebra in the apartment?"
On His Definition of Luxury
"For me, luxury—especially in the sense of interior design—is the idea of taking luxurious things and using them in your day-to-day life. It's something that we saw happen in fashion, and I don't think it's necessarily something that has happened in design yet—which is what's so alluring about it.
I think there was a time in fashion when the Hermès bags came off the shelves and people started wearing Chanel jackets with ripped jeans and people started glamorizing using luxury—and that became very desirable."
On His Advice to Young Designers
"Figure out what your look is, what you aesthetic is. It needs to be something that people can recognize and understand what you are doing. If you are not confident in the message that you're sending, then it doesn’t matter."
On What's Next
"Every time I finish a project I get this nervous feeling. What's next? What is around the corner? To keep doing and working on the stuff I'm working on right now, and to have that keep coming for years and years would be the ultimate dream."
Ryan Korban: Luxury Redefined, $29.48, amazon.com
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