* Vincent Fourcade; Interior Designer for Rich and Famous

Vincent Fourcade, 58, whose sumptuous Rothschildean style decorated the homes of celebrities and inspired a set in the film “Bonfire of the Vanities.” Interior design by the firm he founded with his longtime partner, Robert Denning, became a symbol of wealth and status in Europe and the United States. They made wide use of damasks, cottons and chintz for fabrics, velvet wallpaper, tasseled curtains, fringed lampshades and French furniture. Fourcade and Denning grabbed headlines when they began in the late 1950s decorating extravagant social events in New York. At a cancer benefit at the Armory, they covered floors with wall-to-wall raccoon fur from old coats. Fourcade was born in Paris but struck out for New York at 24 to start a short-lived career in banking with the Irving Trust Co. He and Denning, whom he met at the time, eventually decorated the homes of financier Henry Kravis and his wife, fashion designer Carolyne Roehm, singer Diana Ross and couturier Oscar de la Renta. In the movie version of Tom Wolfe’s novel “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” stock trader Sherman McCoy’s apartment was patterned after one of Denning and Fourcade’s interiors. In Paris on Wednesday of the complications of AIDS.