Interior Designer Angelo Donghia, 50

Angelo Donghia, an interior designer who became nationally known in the 1960s when he used the simple fabrics of men’s wear to cover modern furniture pieces, died in New York Hospital in New York City Wednesday.

Donghia, who opened a West Coast headquarters on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles in 1976, was 50 and had been battling pneumonia.

A native of Pennsylvania, Donghia over the years decorated some of the best-known homes in America. Among them were those of entertainers Mary Tyler Moore, Diana Ross and Steve Martin, playwright Neil Simon and fashion designer Ralph Lauren.

A graduate of the Parsons School of Design, his original trademark was the widespread use of gray flannel to cover bulky furniture pieces.

Donghia later became among the first of the celebrity designers to put his name and talents in American homes when his linens, wall coverings, textiles and rugs were sold in several retail outlets across the country. He also licensed gift ware and printed fabrics in his name for a selected few of the country’s premier home-design labels.

In 1978 he set up a separate furniture firm to sell his own designs.

Donghia’s firms also did the interior designs of many hotels, restaurants and offices, among them Pepsico’s world headquarters in Purchase, N.Y., the Intercontinental Hotel in New Orleans and the Omni International Hotel in Miami.

In 1960 he designed New York’s Metropolitan Opera Club and in 1980 redesigned the interior of the luxury liner France when it became the cruise ship Norway.

Donghia is survived by his mother, Carmella, of New York City.