In 1912, Roman Tyrtov arrived in Paris - the son of Admiral Peter Tyrtov, a descendant of a family that had served the Russian Navy for generations. He chose a profession that his family considered disgraceful: fashion design.

His first Parisian residence was a small tidy hotel near the Madeleine church. "Very nice, very clean," he recalled later. A few days later, he began to notice that he encountered the same ladies in the elevator each time - and each time with a new escort. The hotel turned out to be an hôtel de passe (rooms rented by the hour - essentially for prostitution).

He found work at the second-rate house "Caroline." A month later, the owner fired him and, as a farewell, gave him a piece of advice: "Do anything in life, just never try to draw models - you have no talent for it whatsoever." He asked if he could take the sketches he had made for her. "They are all in the trash can. You can empty it."
He emptied it. And took those sheets to Paul Poiret - the first couturier of Paris.

Thus, Erté was born - a pseudonym derived from the French pronunciation of the initials R.T. Next came costumes for the stage and for Mata Hari, the Folies Bergère, Hollywood, over two hundred covers of Harper’s Bazaar over two decades - and a second birth of fame in the 1960s, when the world rediscovered Art Deco and found that its main graphic artist was still alive and working. Erté died in Paris in 1990, at the age of ninety-eight, still sitting at his desk. A Russian émigré who was professionally told in his very first month that he had no talent.