"At the end of the twentieth century, Karim Rashid emerged as one of the most sought after designers. Art et Industrie in SoHo and Totem in TriBeCa (both in New York City) have organized exhibitions of his work. In 19989 the Brooklyn Museum named Rashid  the Young Designer of the Year, and the following year he won the prestigious DaimlerChrysler design award.

Rashid emigrated from London with his family  to Montreal in 1966, then moved to Toronto. Graduating from Ottawa's Carleton University School of Industrial Design in 1982, he was awarded one of the last Design Canada scholarships and studied in Naples. The following year, he apprenticed at the studio of Rodolpho Bonetto in Milan. On returning to Canada in the mid-eighties, Rashid, Pauline Landriault and Scott Cressmen created Babel, Toronto, a mens- and womenswear line that won considerable acclaim.

He gained industrial design experience at KAN. As the company's senior designer for seven years, he had corporate clients that included Brita, Semi-Tech Microelectronics and Imax. Simultaneously, he created art furniture that was featured in Virtu.

Rashid taught at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1992 and set up a studio in New York City the following year. Nambé, a manufacturer of metal-alloy tableware in Santa Fe, New Mexico, was the first company to make Rashid's designs in high volume, producing over forty patterns of tableware accessories. For Pure Design in Edmonton, he created the Pura chair and Arp stool series. Umbra is a major client, and the Garbo garbage can (1997) has been a notable success for designer and company."