Altina Schinasi

Altina Schinasi (August 4, 1907 – August 19, 1999) was an American artist, designer, filmmaker, and philanthropist of Sephardic Jewish descent, best known for inventing the Harlequin eyeglass frame in the late 1920s, which popularized the cat-eye style for women. Born in New York City to parents who emigrated from the Ottoman Empire, Schinasi drew inspiration for her eyewear design from Venetian harlequin masks, aiming to transform utilitarian glasses into fashionable accessories after observing the drab frames available in the 1930s. Her innovation earned the Lord & Taylor Annual American Design Award in 1939 and was later worn by icons such as Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn, influencing eyewear trends through the mid-20th century.

Schinasi's multifaceted career extended beyond design into visual arts, sculpture, and documentary filmmaking; she studied at the Art Students League of New York and collaborated on window displays with Salvador Dalí at Bonwit Teller. In the 1960s, she directed George Grosz’ Interregnum, a short film nominated for an Academy Award and awarded first prize at the Venice Film Festival, showcasing her mentorship under artist George Grosz. Later, she created "chairacters," hybrid sculptures of chairs embodying human forms, which gained media attention in outlets like the Los Angeles Times Magazine.

Altina Schinasi was born on August 4, 1907, in Manhattan, New York City, to parents of Sephardic Jewish heritage: her father, Morris Schinasi, an immigrant from Manisa, Turkey, who built a fortune in the tobacco industry after arriving penniless and inventing a cigarette-rolling machine; and her mother, Laurette Schinasi, originally from Salonica (now Thessaloniki, Greece).

The family's wealth, derived from Morris Schinasi's international tobacco business, afforded an affluent upbringing in a 12-bedroom white marble mansion on New York's Upper East Side, immersing young Altina in a culturally diverse environment shaped by her parents' Ottoman-era immigrant roots and the city's vibrant Sephardic Jewish community. Despite this privilege, which included attendance at a private Episcopalian boarding school in Wellesley, Massachusetts—where she encountered early instances of anti-Semitism—Schinasi displayed an independent streak, nurturing nascent artistic inclinations through self-directed exploration rather than conforming to expectations of debutante society.