Son of an aeronautical builder,  Philippe Starck was born in Paris in 1949. At the age of twenty he was already artistic director for Cardin, and at twenty-five went round the world and settled in the USA. 

At twenty-six he went back to Paris and designed the first big "hard" night club, La Main Bleu. This was followed by other clubs, cafés, restaurants, shops, hotels, Pierre Balmain's salon, and Francois Mitterand's apartment at the Elysée. He designed a collection of furniture for the French Minister of Culture, created the Royalton Hotel in New York, did two big buildings in Japan, Nani Nani and Asahi. Then there was the Téatriz in Madrid, the Paramount Hotel in New York, the Baron Vert, and an even more astonishing building in Osaka.

He won the competition for the Ecole Nationale des Arts Decoratifs in Paris, he planned the new Téatriz in Mexico, a new hotel in Miami, and many other projects all over the world. Amongst all this activity, he also found time to design pasta, boats. ashtrays, tooth-brushes, handles, lemon-squeezers,  cutlery, watches, scooters, offices, beds, thermic containers, toys, baths, television sets, radios . . . in short, every possible thing.