“I really should have been a pharaoh - do you know that?” — Anouska Hempel

I get up in the morning, look around, arrange and rearrange things, and imagine how I might like them to look. Why doesn't everybody?

Design, refine and repeat, and keep learning all the way along. It sounds bland and pedestrian, but in fact, it's the reverse.

I'd always been acutely sensitive to my surroundings - and aware that I could make them rather than just observe them. So I began by designing interiors for myself, for friends, for clients - I just felt that I'd discovered my element, and those who really looked at what I was doing liked it - and the rest followed.

I love to get on the road, but I also think arriving is such a thrill. Turning up at the train station in Mumbai, for example, to see people hanging off all the wonderful old carriages. It's extraordinary - everyone sitting with their chickens on their laps, moving forward but not going anywhere fast.