I wouldn't. I don't think I have a style in part because I didn't have a big plan or 50 tear sheets of [inspiration] as this is my third career. If anything, to work like Andrée Putman, who I think was very successful in being both contemporary and sampling from history, is an aspiration. But I don't think we would claim a style; we wouldn't want to, as we like to approach each project as a new set of opportunities.

I bought two Michel Boyer fibreglass chairs around 2014 or 2015 from Demisch Danant, my favourite gallery-meets-project space in NYC, and likely anywhere. They were designed by Boyer for the Rothschild bank cafeteria in 1968. I never had a space for them until I moved recently to my new-ish apartment in the city. The building is from the late 70s and both the building and the chairs speak to some futurist mid-century ambition that I enjoy and seems to have been lost. The most recent thing I’ve purchased is a quilt from Eight Million Gods, near Taos, New Mexico. I think it’s a contemporary version of an Indian Kantha quilt. 

There's an artist and chef in New Mexico named Johnny Ortiz-Concha who has a food project called The Shed Project and he makes these clay pots. He grew up on a Native American reservation and he makes pots out of micaceous clay that he finds on his property and fires it in the traditional local way they have always fired ceramics. I have many already but I got one for my 50th birthday gift and it was the largest thing he's ever made. I've been touching it for about 20 minutes every time I get home.

When I was in Milan two years ago, I found Pietro Romanengo’s chocolate store and these caraway seeds that are dipped in pink and blue candied ginger. I bought like 20 packets because they’re beautiful if you put them in a little bowl, everyone asks about them – and they’re also a natural breath freshener. They seemed like a good hostess gift to bring to dinner. I sort of almost never stay in someone's house, because I don't want someone to ask me to stay in mine – I know that's terrible, but it’s true. 

I prefer it not to be a blank canvas, but I do want it to be orderly. My desk at the office is very different from my desk at home, which is my dining table. I enjoy working there, and it does have things that are not work-related on it that just look good and I feel like give me some sort of magic.

Right now, there is a plastic car that I found at a beach in Northern California this summer. Given what I was thinking about, it felt like a sign and to be perfectly honest I also took it because I also didn't want to leave a piece of plastic on the beach. I found it in my bag when unpacking in New York and so it's on my desk. And then I have a bunch of French Elle Décorations from the 1990s and a World of Interiors issue with Josephus Thimister apartment in Paris in the Nineties. When I'm on a Zoom call that's a boring one – of which there are many – I’ll thumb through them while I'm listening. 

I like a Uniball pen. I like the crispness of the line when writing and sketching. And I have a superstition that I can't use black ink, so I have them in blue ink and red ink.

I have a book called The Bloomingdale's Guide to Home Decorating from the 70s, maybe early 80s, and it was edited by the then-head of visuals for its windows, Barbara D’Arcy. She was a very influential person and ended up creating its home department that launched Kartell in the US in the 60s and 70s and made it a big deal on the 7th floor. I came across her whilst I was writing my thesis, and it took me a while to figure out how to reach out to her. After some digging, I found her number and called but sadly her husband told me she had passed away two weeks before. And so, I ended up doing a project with Wallpaper* Magazine in Milan where I recreated one of her windows from Bloomingdales and called it the D’Arcy Party. There are so many heroes, right? But this person was actually an unsung hero to so many people and brands alike.

I went to grad school at UCLA and there were so many opportunities to be hyper specific and really dig into one specific thing. I remember speaking to my thesis advisor, Sylvia Lavin, at the time about transcendentalism and emotional attachment. She was as sharp as a tack and said, "you're talking about mood and atmosphere". And I was like, boom! Everything became perfectly clear and it made me interested in this idea of privileging things that are atmospheric and moody as opposed to thematic. You’re lucky to meet people in life like that. She just gave me these tools that I'm like, wow, now I’ve built a career off them. So, I don't even know if I hadn't had that conversation where I'd be.