Nazak Savitt blends Parisian heritage, modern interiors, and art into spaces that feel personal, layered, and timeless.
Nazak Savitt is a designer and founder of Nazak Savitt Design, a New York-based practice working across interior design, graphics, and objects. Born in Iran and raised in Paris, she studied at ENSCI-Les Ateliers and developed early professional experience connected to Yves Saint Laurent and designer Andrée Putman.
Her interiors are notable for combining historic architecture with contemporary furniture, art, vintage pieces, strong color, and highly personal objects rather than following a single decorative formula.
What You'll Discover:
Who Is Nazak Savitt?
Nazak Savitt occupies an interesting space between interior designer, graphic designer, and visual curator. Her professional work is based in New York, but her design vocabulary has strong Parisian and Iranian cultural influences. Her portfolio includes residential interiors in New York, the Hamptons, Massachusetts, and Paris, alongside graphic identities, restaurant graphics, catalogs, and objects.
Her background helps explain why her work often feels less like a collection of matching furniture and more like an assembled visual story.
Savitt’s own professional profile states that she was born in Iran and raised in Paris. She studied at ENSCI-Les Ateliers in Paris from 1985 to 1989, and her listed early experience includes an internship at Yves Saint Laurent as well as work involving fragrance design and collaboration with Jacques Polge and Pierre Dinand.
That combination is significant. A conventional interior-design education might emphasize space planning and materials, but Savitt’s career also developed around fashion, graphics, objects, branding, and visual composition.
Nazak Savitt is not simply an interior decorator; her published portfolio shows a broader design practice spanning interiors, graphics, and objects.
What Influenced Nazak Savitt’s Design Philosophy?
Parisian design culture
Paris appears repeatedly in Savitt’s professional story and completed projects. Her upbringing there exposed her to architectural history, decorative arts, fashion, museums, and the particular Parisian habit of putting contemporary objects into old buildings.
That sensibility becomes especially visible in her Paris projects. Rather than treating historical architecture as something to erase, the approach often allows original moldings, fireplaces, stained glass, parquet, and proportions to remain part of the visual conversation.
Her work with Andrée Putman is another important piece of the story. A Paris-based project by Nooor Architecture specifically identifies Putman’s influence on Savitt and describes their collaboration during Savitt’s Paris years.
Fashion and graphic design
Savitt’s early connection with Yves Saint Laurent and later graphic work provide another useful lens through which to understand her interiors. Fashion teaches composition, proportion, texture, contrast, and the importance of a memorable detail; graphic design adds typography, repetition, visual rhythm, and identity.
Those disciplines can translate surprisingly well into rooms.
A chair becomes a shape rather than merely a seat. A lamp becomes a punctuation mark. A doorway or colored wall can function almost like a graphic frame.
Her portfolio demonstrates this multidisciplinary approach through projects including branding for Merchants NY, Cafe Boulud graphics, restaurant illustrations for Daniel Boulud, art catalogs, fashion catalogs, and identity systems.
What Is Nazak Savitt’s Interior Design Style?
It is difficult to reduce Savitt’s work to a single style label—and that may be the most useful observation.
Her projects tend to combine historic and contemporary, restrained and playful, collected and polished. Instead of making every element belong to the same period, she creates tension between objects from different eras.
The result can be compared to a well-edited wardrobe: not everything matches, but everything has a reason for being there.
Historic architecture meets modern living
A particularly clear example is the Paris apartment near the Jardin du Luxembourg, completed through collaboration between Nooor Architecture and Nazak Savitt Design. The 165-square-meter apartment was extensively reorganized for a New York couple, creating three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a larger kitchen, and more functional entertaining spaces.
The original architecture remained important.
Moldings and woodwork were restored, while contemporary elements—including a modern Poliform kitchen—were introduced alongside an existing marble fireplace and other historical details. Nooor describes the project as a balance between modernity and classicism, functionality and elegance.
That is a useful distinction when discussing Savitt’s interiors. The goal is not simply to reproduce “Parisian style.” It is to make an old space work for contemporary life without stripping away the characteristics that made it special.
Color as an architectural tool
Color is another recurring element.
In the Parisian apartment featured by NEST Magazine, a stained-glass window in the entrance became an unexpected source of inspiration. Rather than replacing the feature because it did not initially fit the designer’s aesthetic, Savitt used cobalt blue drawn from the glass on surrounding trim, doors, and lower walls.
That decision illustrates an important design principle: existing details can become the starting point rather than the obstacle.
It is a subtle difference, but a powerful one. Instead of asking, “How do I make this room look like my style?” the designer can ask, “What is this room already telling me?”
A Closer Look at the Paris–Luxembourg Apartment
The Paris–Luxembourg project is one of the clearest windows into Savitt’s current design language.
The apartment combines formal Parisian architecture with objects and furniture from different periods and places. NEST Magazine describes vintage Italian lighting, Murano glass, contemporary art, African sculpture, antique furniture, and modern pieces appearing together throughout the home.
The kitchen provides an especially useful contrast.
Its contemporary Italian cabinetry and geometric flooring establish a modern backdrop, while vintage lighting, an original marble fireplace, and personal objects prevent the space from feeling like a showroom. The kitchen becomes both a functional workspace and a social room.
The bedroom follows a quieter approach, with cobalt accents appearing through lighting and furnishings. Meanwhile, the principal bathroom combines Gris de Sainte Anne marble, Italian porcelain tile, polished chrome, and vintage-inspired fixtures.
The lesson is broader than any individual material: cohesion does not require uniformity.
Nazak Savitt’s Major Design Work
| Project or area | Location | What it reveals |
| Paris–Luxembourg apartment | Paris | Historic architecture combined with contemporary living |
| Upper West Side prewar building | New York | Appreciation for architectural character |
| Amagansett Beach House | New York | Residential work beyond urban interiors |
| Bridgehampton Beach House | New York | Coastal residential design |
| Berkshires Country House | Massachusetts | Adaptation to a rural setting |
| Graphic identities and catalogs | New York/Paris | Broader visual-design practice |
| Restaurant graphics | New York | Application of drawing and branding to hospitality |
Savitt’s official portfolio lists residential projects across Paris, New York, Amagansett, Bridgehampton, the Berkshires, and Riverdale, alongside a separate body of graphics and objects.
That geographic range matters because it shows that her work is not dependent on one architectural type. The underlying approach travels from prewar Manhattan apartments to beach houses and European residences.
What Can Homeowners Learn From Nazak Savitt’s Approach?
You do not need a Parisian apartment or an unlimited decorating budget to borrow useful ideas from her work.
Start with what cannot easily be replaced
Architectural features often have more character than newly purchased decoration. Original moldings, doors, fireplaces, windows, floors, and unusual proportions can give a room an identity before furniture enters it.
Savitt’s Paris work demonstrates this particularly well: historical elements were preserved while the layout and furnishings were adapted for modern use.
Mix periods deliberately
A room filled entirely with furniture from one decade can look coordinated but predictable. Mixing vintage and contemporary pieces introduces visual depth.
The trick is not random accumulation. Repetition in color, material, shape, or scale creates connections between pieces that otherwise come from completely different worlds.
Give personal objects room to matter
Travel finds, books, art, inherited objects, and unusual decorative pieces can make an interior feel inhabited rather than staged.
Savitt’s Paris project incorporates personal objects, travel-related pieces, art, and books as part of the composition.
That suggests a practical rule: decorate around your life, rather than decorating first and trying to fit your life into the result.
Use contrast instead of excess
Contrast does not necessarily mean bright colors everywhere. It can mean old beside new, glossy beside matte, formal beside informal, or monumental beside delicate.
Savitt’s interiors repeatedly use those relationships to create interest without relying on a single decorative theme.
Nazak Savitt Beyond Interior Design
One of the easiest things to miss when researching Nazak Savitt is the extent of her graphic-design work.
Her studio portfolio includes wine-label design, fashion catalogs, restaurant identity, signage, logos, art catalogs, illustrations, and limited-edition printed material.
This broader practice helps explain the visual precision found in her interiors.
Graphic design trains the eye to think about hierarchy: what should be noticed first, what should sit quietly in the background, and how individual elements contribute to a larger composition. Those same decisions exist in a room.
Her work therefore sits at the intersection of interior design, visual identity, art, fashion, and collecting rather than fitting neatly into one category.
Recent Work and Cultural Projects
Savitt’s professional activity has also extended into cultural projects connected with contemporary Iranian photography.
In 2025, she co-organized the “Regard sur l’Iran” group photography exhibition in Paris with David Nitlich. The exhibition brought together work by 10 Iranian photographers and was presented at the Consulat Voltaire. The photography publication L’Œil de la Photographie identifies Savitt and Nitlich as the organizers.
Her involvement is notable because it connects her design career with a broader interest in Iranian visual culture.
At the same time, her Paris–Luxembourg residential project received coverage in NEST Magazine’s Winter 2025 issue, showing that her interior-design practice remains active alongside these cultural interests.
What Makes Nazak Savitt’s Work Distinctive?
The strongest thread through Savitt’s portfolio is not a particular color palette, furniture brand, or architectural period. It is curation.
She appears interested in what happens when different visual histories are allowed to coexist: Paris and New York, Iranian heritage and European design, antiques and contemporary furniture, architecture and art, polished interiors and objects with personal stories.
That makes her work useful to study even for people who have no interest in reproducing a specific “designer look.”
The deeper idea is that a memorable interior can come from relationships between things rather than from uniformity.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Nazak Savitt?
Nazak Savitt is a designer and founder of Nazak Savitt Design, a practice based in New York that works across interiors, graphics, and objects. She was born in Iran, raised in Paris, and studied at ENSCI-Les Ateliers.
Where did Nazak Savitt study?
Savitt studied at ENSCI-Les Ateliers in Paris from 1985 to 1989, according to her professional profile.
Did Nazak Savitt work with Andrée Putman?
Yes. Project documentation from Nooor Architecture states that Savitt worked with Andrée Putman during her years in Paris, and identifies Putman’s influence on the Paris–Luxembourg apartment.
What is Nazak Savitt known for?
She is known for residential interiors that combine historical architecture, contemporary furnishings, vintage objects, art, and distinctive color. Her studio also has a substantial graphic-design portfolio.
What is one of Nazak Savitt’s recent projects?
Her Paris–Luxembourg apartment renovation was featured in NEST Magazine’s Winter 2025 issue. She also co-organized the 2025 “Regard sur l’Iran” photography exhibition in Paris.
Key Takeaways
- Nazak Savitt is a New York-based designer working across interiors, graphics, and objects.
- She was born in Iran, raised in Paris, and studied at ENSCI-Les Ateliers.
- Her professional background includes experience connected to Yves Saint Laurent and Andrée Putman.
- Her interiors frequently balance historic architecture with contemporary furniture and modern functionality.
- The Paris–Luxembourg apartment demonstrates her use of color, vintage pieces, art, and preserved architectural details.
- Her graphic-design work includes restaurant identities, catalogs, logos, illustrations, and printed objects.
- Her 2025 cultural work included co-organizing a Paris exhibition of contemporary Iranian photography.
Additional Resources
- Nazak Design official portfolio: The most direct source for exploring Savitt’s interiors, graphics, objects, and documented projects.
