[NEW YORK (CNN) --] If you're going to live with it, you have to love it, ... Everything that comes into my apartment, I have to use.

[The master bedroom gets drama from its large-scale Victorian furniture and sophisticated mauve color scheme.] We tried about 20 mauves until we found the right shade, ... It could get kind of Pepto-Bismoly or too purpley.

[The red library is Sui's tribute to fashion maven Diana Vreeland, who served as editor for Harper's Bazaar (1939-1962) and Vogue (1963-1961).] My most precious collection is my bound Vogue magazines, ... and they're kind of like my Bible. I look at them all the time when I'm trying to inspire myself for a collection.

[Her latest addition to the living room -- paper mache furniture, with mother-of-pearl inlay -- follows those guidelines. What attracted her to it?] I think that the fact that it's black and that it has like this color in it and there's painting around it, ... It just doesn't seem real, and then the fact that it's functional too.

The colors kind of take on a very earthy tone, but with a richness of a forest or a garden. Dark greens, redish browns, kind of golden yellows, and some oranges for accent.

Every season I buy a double-breasted jacket but it could be fitted, very boxy. It could be oversized. It could be forties-shaped. So I think it's my job to make it desirable and new for the customer and the customer always has to fill in that slot in their wardrobe.