In 1981, I wrote a 10-page profile of Angelo Donghia for the first issue of a design magazine called Metropolitan Home. He was exactly what I expected: Impeccably dressed, he sat ramrod straight at his desk, took no phone calls, gave me much more time than he’d budgeted, and made sure I got to talk to hard-to-reach clients like Halston (“At the opening of the Opera Club at the Met, we ordered a magnum of champagne and refused to budge, while people like Ted Kennedy couldn’t get a seat”) and Ralph Lauren (“I was Angelo’s worst client”). And, best of all, he was a gifted storyteller, with a magical success story to share.

Donghia grew up in Vandergrift, Pennsylvania, a tiny town 30 miles from Pittsburgh. Small and not athletic, he worked in his father’s tailor shop on Saturdays to earn money for the movies. He organized supplies. He arranged racks on clothes. When he was just 7, his father let him create a window display for a headless mannequin in a tuxedo.

“I had the idea of an open scene near water, so I put an old piece of mirror on the floor of the window, rested water lilies on the mirror, and placed my display against a black background,” he told me. “When it was finished, it looked like the suit were floating on water lilies. It was like the movies — it was bigger than life, it was exaggeration, and it was spotlit. My father’s reaction was the greatest thing that ever happened to me — he always allowed me to do things and never disagreed with what I was doing.”

At 11, his father handed him a few thousand dollars to redesign the shop. “I didn’t waver for a minute,” Donghia recalled. “I drew it, I chose the colors, and I completed it. The result was perhaps liked by some and hated by others, but that didn’t bother me. What mattered was that I had made something which was really the way I saw it and felt it.”

In high school, where he was president of the student council and ran five other organizations, he sensed that he could be more than a manager — he could lead. Inevitably, he studied at Parsons School of Design in New York, where he was such a standout he was offered a job by noted decorator Yale Burge. Donghia asked for $100 a week. “Will you take $75?” Burge asked. Yes, he would. And he’d skip a final exam so he could start on Monday.



Donghia outworked everyone in the office, became indispensable. After his triumph as designer of the Opera Club at the Metropolitan Opera House — described by a fan as “the finest box of dark chocolates in antique gold wrapping” — he became Burge’s partner; when Burge died, the 37-year-old Donghia inherited the company.



In Yale Burge’s time, decorating was done by society-approved decorators for society clients. Rooms were traditional, tasteful. Designers weren’t celebrities; Burge was a star in a small universe. As Donghia was quick to notice, “Almost no one made any money.”



Burge colored between the lines. Not Donghia: “I knew that what I had wasn’t enough and that my growth had to be through means which weren’t the decorating business. ... I told myself that I would be a success. I was fearless. I was willing to fail, and I was lucky. It was that simple.”



His campaign to become a one-man conglomerate began almost immediately. He launched a company to market his fabrics. Sofas, furniture, even gray-flannel ice buckets — he was Martha Stewart before there was Martha Stewart, Ralph Lauren with a greater range of products. After he made public appearances in 200 cities to promote his sheet collection for J.P. Stevens, his name was known to consumers who could only dream of hiring him. At the same time, he designed for mega-clients: hotels, cruise ships, corporations. And he was a sharp businessman: At 40, when he opened a showroom in Los Angeles, he bought the building and became the landlord for other designers.



What drove Donghia? The desire to be rich and famous, for sure. But even more, the desire to see how far and how high he could go. He wanted to make films, open more companies. Why, he might even design a city. “I’d like to start in a small way, with a building or two,” he told me, smiling at his definition of training wheels. “Then a condominium. Then a mini-city. When you enter its walls, nothing would happen in that space except what was permitted to happen — from the way the streets look to the furniture and the lighting.”

“You say that so matter-of-factly,” I said. “Wouldn’t that give you the chills?”

“Certain things might give me a rush, so I feel, ‘My goodness, I never thought of that.' But I feel there isn’t anything that anyone can’t do.”