Out Spotlight

Today's Out Spotlight was one of the most innovative designers of the twentieth century. His work has inspired everyone from haute couture fashionistas to Las Vegas showgirls and drag queens.
Diversely-talented he created and influenced fashion, jewelery, graphic arts, costume and set designs for film, theater, and opera, and interior design. Today's Out Spotlight is Russian-born French artist and designer Erté.

Romain de Tirtoff was born to a wealthy, distinguished family in St. Petersburg, Russia on November 23, 1892. His father, Pyotr Ivanovich Tyrtov, served as an admiral in the Russian Fleet.

He discovered a love of costuming at a young age through the ballet. By his teens, he was sketching his own designs and at age 20 he moved to Paris to follow his passion and pursue a career as a designer. He made the decision despite strong objections from his father, who wanted him to continue the family tradition and become a naval officer.

A private man who wished to not to disgrace his conservative family and protect their privacy, he created his nom de plume, Erté (ER-Tay), from the French phonetic pronunciation of his initials. Playful and clever, yet genderless, the nom de plume added to his mystique.

Some of Erté's earliest designs and costumes were for the dancer Mata Hari. Those and his illustrations for the Paris magazine La Gazette du Bon Ton, garnered him some attention, but it wasn't until his drawings appeared in Harper's Bazaar that he gained widespread recognition.In 1915, he secured his first substantial contract with Harper's Bazaar magazine, and began an illustrious career that included designing costumes and stage sets.

Between 1915–1937, Erté did hundreds of dazzling pen and ink drawings and 240 covers for the weekly fashion magazine. His illustrations also appeared in such publications as Illustrated London News, Cosmopolitan, Ladies' Home Journal, and Vogue.

Erté brought the decadent style and rich colors--jade green, crimson, and orange--of Asian culture to life for Westerners. Influenced by everything from Greek vase paintings to Egyptian idols, Indian iconography and Russian religious art, his designs embraced the exotic.

Exquisitely detailed and precise, his drawings were playfully erotic, emphasizing luxury, beauty, and spectacle. They featured exquisite women, sheathed in vibrant fabric, glittering jewels and feathers.
Some of the women in his drawings may have been scantily clad, but the somewhat androgynous female form was beautified and celebrated rather than exploited. When he incorporated male figures into his design, they were nearly always in a homoerotic way.His designs were so popular and imaginative that Erté was given space in Harper's Bazaar to describe his scenes in quaint Wildean tales.

Erté 's best known image is Symphony in Black, depicting a tall, slender woman draped in black holding a thin black dog on a leash. The influential image has been reproduced and copied countless times.

He is perhaps most famous for his elegant fashion designs which capture the Art Deco period. One of his earliest successes was designing apparel for the French dancer Gaby Deslys who died in 1920.

Between the two world wars, Erté designed spectacular scenery and costumes for the ballet, opera, theater, and music-hall. His work on the Ziegfeld Follies, the Folies-Bergère, and shows at the Casino de Paris and the London Palladium is considered some of his best work.

On Broadway, the celebrated French chanteuse Irène Bordoni wore Erté's designs.

In 1925, movie boss Louis B. Mayer brought him to Hollywood to design sets and costumes for the silent film Paris. There were so many script problems with the movie that Erté was given other assignments to keep him busy which found him designing for such films as Ben-Hur, The Mystic, Time, The Comedian, and Dance Madness.

He also designed the set and costumes for the movie Restless Sex starring Marion Davies that was financed by her lover, publishing magnate, William Randolph Hearst.

Erté's imagination stretched far beyond clothing and he continued working throughout his life, designing revues, ballets, and operas. He also branched out bringing Erté style to the masses in limited edition prints, bronzes, and wearable art. He designed everything from fabric, linens, and furniture to handbags, watches, and perfume bottles.

Although he continued to work extensively throughout the 1950s and 1960s, it was not until the Art Deco revival of the 1970s and 1980s that his work again became fashionable, particularly in the United States. Many of his lithographs, including The Alphabet and The Numbers series, became popular posters.

The independent spirit that fired his creative life also spread into his private life. Fierce, fearless, and live-and-let-live, for Erté, his art was his life and he claimed solitude was essential in all stages of his work. He was a man who loved nothing more than his work, cats and solitude.

At the height of Erté's fame in the mid-1930s, he suffered the sudden and tragic death of Prince Nicholas Ourousoff, his friend and business manager, him ‘widowed’ in his mid-30s. The two had lived together in Monte Carlo from 1914 to1923. Although the details of their relationship are ambiguous, this was one of the most defining relationships of his life. Another was with a Danish designer named Axel.
In 1975, he published a memoir, "Things I Remember: An Autobiography". While discreet, he wrote frankly about the number and nature of his romantic affairs, including descriptions of the gay life of 1920s Paris.

Still working until the end, Erté died on April 21, 1990 at the age of 97

Erté's work can be found in the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a sizable collection can be found at Museum 1999 in Tokyo.

His delicate figures and sophisticated, glamorous designs are instantly recognizable, and his ideas and art still influence fashion into the 21st century. His unique vision and genuine talent have made him a lasting fashion icon.

"Look at me, I'm in another world - a dream world that invites oblivion. People take drugs to achieve such freedom from their daily cares. I've never taken drugs. I've never needed them. I achieve a high through work."