A well-known designer and interior decorator, he was born in Istanbul in 1904 into a family of artists; in the 1920s he studied architecture between Spain and France before emigrating to New York, where he initially worked in an electrical supply shop, occasionally designing lamps. These attracted the interest of a gangster, Frankie Yale, who commissioned him to design interiors. His opulent design was inspired by Art Deco, the Hollywood Regency style, and the taste for Chinoiserie, then very much in vogue. For the latter, he is credited with having helped popularise the integration of Asian influences into mid-century design, contaminating restrained American modernism with exotic elements.