Russian artist and designer Romain Petrovich de Tirtoff, better known by his pseudonym Erté, was BOTD in 1892. Born in St Petersburg to an aristocratic family, he moved to Paris in 1912 to pursue a career as a designer, against the wishes of his family who expected him to join the Imperial Navy. He worked briefly for fashion designer Paul Poiret, using the name Erté so as not to embarrass his family, designing gowns for wealthy clients including Luisa Casati. In 1915, he was hired by Harper’s Bazaar magazine, designing 240 covers over the next 20 years. His highly stylised illustrations depicted models in mannered poses draped in luxurious jewels, feathers, and soft, flowing materials against a background of Art Deco interiors. He worked extensively in the theatre, designing for the Ziegfeld Follies and the Folies Bergère, dressing star performers Mara Hari, Sarah Bernhardt, Josephine Baker and Anna Pavlova. In the 1920s he went to Hollywood, designing costumes for MGM silent films Paris, Ben-Hur and The Restless Sex, dressing many of the leading actresses of Hollywood’s Golden Age including Norma Shearer, Marion Davies, Lillian Gish and Joan Crawford. His elaborate designs fell out of fashion after World War Two, though he had a major revival in the Art Deco revival of the 1960s. After a 1967 retrospective of his designs in New York, the entire exhibit was purchased by the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. In the 1970s, he produced lithographs and serigraphs, bringing his work to wider public attention, and he extended his line to include jewellery, perfume bottles and interior furnishings. Openly gay since forever, he lived with Prince Nicolas Ouroussoff for 25 years until the Prince’s death in 1933, becoming well-known in Paris society as a couple. Erté’s 1975 memoir Things I Remember chronicled his many relationships and affairs, including with a Danish swimmer named Axel. “I wasted very little energy in trying to fight my own nature,” he wrote, “even less in punishing myself with feelings of guilt.” He continued working and designing until his death in 1990, aged 97.