I'm always drooling over great design, from fashion to furniture.

Hear now, O seeker of beauty and meaning, the bright and joyful words of Janina Gavankar, the artist and muse, who declared: “I'm always drooling over great design, from fashion to furniture.” Though light and playful upon the tongue, these words carry a truth both ancient and profound. In them, she reveals a soul awakened to the divine language of design — to the way form, color, and balance can stir the heart and illuminate the mind. For in great design, whether in the fold of a garment or the curve of a chair, there lies the echo of something eternal: the human longing for harmony, for beauty, for the union of purpose and poetry.

Janina Gavankar, a woman of many gifts — actress, musician, and lover of art — speaks here not as a critic but as a pilgrim of aesthetics. Her quote springs from her reverence for creation in all its forms. When she says she “drools” over design, it is not the hunger of possession she means, but the awe of admiration, the joy that comes when the eye meets something that feels alive. Hers is the response of every artist before a masterpiece — an involuntary surrender to beauty’s pull. The ancients might have called it divine intoxication — the state in which the soul drinks from the fountain of inspiration and feels itself reborn.

To “drool over great design” is, in truth, to acknowledge that beauty has power — that it awakens emotion and speaks directly to the spirit without words. From fashion to furniture, from the garments that adorn the body to the objects that shape our homes, design is the art of translating the invisible — ideas, feelings, and dreams — into form. It is the merging of thought and touch, of intention and material. In this, Gavankar’s admiration mirrors the reverence of the ancients for craftsmanship — for the potter, the weaver, the sculptor, who shaped the world not for vanity, but for harmony between humanity and the divine.

Consider the tale of William Morris, the English craftsman and philosopher of the nineteenth century, who once said, “Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” Like Gavankar, Morris believed that design was not decoration but expression, the visible reflection of human care. He founded the Arts and Crafts movement to restore the soul to things — to remind the world that even the humblest chair or teacup, when made with purpose and love, becomes a vessel of spirit. Gavankar’s words are an echo of that same ideal: to see beauty not as a luxury, but as a necessity for the soul.

Her devotion to great design also reveals a deeper truth — that to love design is to love life itself, for design is the silent rhythm that underlies all creation. The tree that curves toward the sun, the shell that spirals to golden proportion, the stars that align in their celestial architecture — all follow the same law of beauty that the artist imitates with hand and heart. Gavankar’s “drooling” is thus not folly, but reverence — the spontaneous worship of the pattern that binds the cosmos together. When we train our eyes to see it — in fashion, in furniture, in the everyday — we begin to live with greater awareness of the sacred order that surrounds us.

Yet there is also in her words a call to gratitude and mindfulness. In a world that too often rushes past beauty in pursuit of function or novelty, Gavankar reminds us to pause and see. To delight in a well-cut coat, in the smooth line of a wooden table, in the dance of color on a painted wall — these are not idle pleasures. They are acts of appreciation, ways of saying to the universe, “I see what has been made with care, and it moves me.” The one who can feel such joy is richer than the one who merely owns what is beautiful, for the true wealth of life lies not in possession, but in perception.

Take this lesson, then, into your own life, O listener: train your senses to recognize beauty wherever it dwells. Let your eyes rest upon what is well made; let your heart be stirred by balance and form. Seek out great design — not to consume it, but to learn from it, to let it teach you about grace, patience, and the quiet discipline of creation. For when you learn to see beauty deeply, you learn also to create it — in your home, in your work, in your spirit.

And so, as Janina Gavankar reminds us, let your admiration for design — from the threads that clothe your body to the shapes that hold your life — become an act of reverence. For in every beautiful creation there beats the pulse of humanity’s endless striving toward the divine. And if you open your eyes to it, if you let it move you, then you too will become a designer of your own world — shaping each moment, each choice, each space with intention, love, and wonder.