Philippe Starck on Design and Politics

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Partnerships between those companies and stars are like the situation with the music labels and major recording artists. We lock up all the possibilities. The system is operating so efficiently that people take less risk with young creators—because if they do business with people like me, they know it's a guaranteed success. Since I have an altruistic nature and political consciousness, that bugs me. I prefer the common interest, and especially the interest of the young creators, to my own interests.

So how will it work?

Today if people want a decoration or a piece of furniture, they have to pass through Philippe Starck or a major company. Tomorrow, any creator could sell his talent, his objects, to anybody. A woman in Sydney can see a young British designer on mydeco and say: "Oh, I like that," and be able, through mydeco, to order a decoration directly from this young Brit, who with the system of virtual imagery, will be able to show the woman in Australia how it looks. So you don't go through the majors anymore, you don't go through the stars.

How will this change the way people's homes look?

You have your living room, you take photos of it. You need a table, you have access to a million tables. You pick one, it appears in your virtual living room. There is no taste dictatorship anymore. Everybody will have access to his own taste.

But there will still be a need for interior designers?

Mydeco is the continuation of what I did with the British company Yoo, which has been an extraordinary success, because I have helped people choose interiors that correspond to them so they can live in harmony, build their own home, their own egg, their own life. This is all consistent. Democratic design goes with mydeco; mydeco goes with Yoo; Yoo is a partner with mydeco.

What opportunities will this open up for young designers?

It will give creators in the middle of the countryside, in the desert, or countries where there is no cultural or industrial activity a platform for recognition, to become not a star, because there won't be any more stars, but a fundamental component of world creation. That is what is extraordinary. Mydeco is a structural revolution, a social revolution, which ultimately will give a universal access to creation.

Why now? And why mydeco and not some other Internet venture. Surely others have thought of similar ventures?

Brent [Hoberman, mydeco's founder] not only came at the right moment but he brought his knowhow, talent, investment power, and extraordinary technology. In the lab you can dream of everything, but to make it work is a different thing. Brent is the sole person who really knows how to do it. This is why out of the hundreds of proposals that we have received over the years from Internet ventures, we have accepted to be only in this one. Mydeco has the right weapon.

What specifically is your role in the company?

I am a co-chairman of the design advisory board [along with Terence Conran], and after that I am a kind of subversive element, a rebel, an avant-garde scout to bring new ideas, set up a process to get new creators, create competitions to find young creators. My role is to be a kind of creative director, spirit, soul, and temple-keeper, so that mydeco always keeps this subversive power.

Even if it means affecting your current business?

I am here to dynamite the existing system of the majors and the stars that go along with it. So I am here once more to dynamite myself. But when there is an opportunity to increase the speed of evolution, the speed of knowledge, the speed of creativity, the quality of creativity, you have to do it.

(Translated from French by Jennifer L. Schenker)