"Erté dresses the dream: Paris becomes a stage where every silhouette is an invitation to fantasy."
Born Romain de Tirtoff in Saint Petersburg in 1892, Erté settled in Paris as a young man and, working under Paul Poiret, invented a pseudonym and, with it, an entire visual language for the Art Deco age. Over more than two decades of covers for Harper's Bazaar, and through his costumes and sets for the Folies Bergère, the Bal Tabarin and countless revues, he transformed Paris into a theatre of elegance, where the female silhouette became architecture and ornament at once. Erté died in his adopted city in 1990, having spent nearly eighty years turning Parisian nightlife, fashion and spectacle into a single, unmistakable decorative style.