Naomi Leff, 64; Interior Designer Whose Clients Included Hollywood Moguls and Fashion Giants

Naomi Leff, an interior designer whose clients included Hollywood moguls, fashion giants and corporate kingpins, and who was repeatedly listed among the top names in her field by leading magazines such as Architectural Digest and Interior Design, died Sunday. She was 64.

Leff died of congestive liver disease after being hospitalized at Mt. Sinai Medical Center in New York, said friend Barbara Ashley.

During more than 20 years as head of her firm, Leff created residential interiors for actors Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman and director Mike Nichols and television newswoman Diane Sawyer.

She also was the unofficial designer for the founders of the DreamWorks SKG production company -- Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen.

She also designed interiors for commercial enterprises, including the Giorgio Armani boutique, a modern steel and glass store in San Francisco, and the Beaver Creek Resort, a “cowboy and Indian”-inspired lodge in Telluride, Colo.

Known for her contemporary reworking of traditional designs, Leff created interior spaces to complement every sort of architectural style from neoclassic beachfront estates and Art Deco apartments to English country cottages and dude ranches.

“Left to herself, Naomi would have preferred a serene, quiet modernism with bits of witty art nouveau or Art Deco,” said Stanley Abercrombie, former editor-in-chief of Interior Design and a longtime friend. “But for clients she was able to conjure up all sorts of historical periods.”

She was known for her thorough historic research and for her use of warm, subtle color and tactile materials such as wood and stone.

“She didn’t have a look, the way some interior designers do,” said Paige Rense, editor-in-chief of Architectural Digest. “She was truly a designer, not a decorator. She knew the history of design and of antiques. She was very knowledgeable.

“She researched everything, but the result was never clinical. She had a warm and comfortable style,” Rense said.

Leff was included among the “Deans of Design” in Architectural Digest’s January issue.

She first attracted national attention in 1986 when she transformed what had been a New York mansion into Ralph Lauren’s flagship store.

Leff kept the luxurious feeling of the original building, a turn-of-the-20th century private residence, when she adapted it as a retail store. Stone fireplaces, warm colored woods, Oriental rugs, leather chairs and other luxurious details complemented Lauren’s fashion tastes.

She then designed the interior for Lauren’s ranch in Ridgway, Colo., a spread with split rail fences, as well as his “high” country estate in Bedford, N.Y.

Leff first worked with the DreamWorks founders as one of several interior designers at the company’s offices in Universal City.

She later was the interior designer of private residences for each of them, including Spielberg’s homes in Pacific Palisades, New York and East Hampton, N.Y.; Katzenberg’s Malibu beach house and his Park City, Utah, home; and Geffen’s homes in New York and Miami.

“Naomi Leff defined style and taste and brought a singular creativity to her work,” Katzenberg said Tuesday. “She could and did create beauty.”

Born in the Bronx, Leff graduated from the State University of New York at Cortland with a bachelor of science degree. She earned a master’s degree in sociology at the University of Wisconsin and a master’s degree in environmental design at Pratt Institute in New York.

She began her career as a senior designer with the architectural firm of John Carle Warnecke from 1973 to 1975.

She worked on the interior designs for several stores, including Neiman-Marcus in Dallas and Bergdorf-Goodman in New York. She then worked as a senior designer at Bloomingdale’s New York store for five years before opening her own office in 1980, in New York.

Along with many exclusive retail stores, Leff designed a prototype for the Armani Exchange stores that feature low-priced, casual clothes. The original, which was built in New York in 1992, was inspired by military PX stores and the open-air markets of Europe. It became the model for Armani Exchange stores nationwide.

Leff is survived by one brother and several nieces and nephews.

Memorial contributions can be made to Mt. Sinai Hospital, Patient Access Fund, 1 Gustave Levy Place, Box 1049, New York, N.Y. 10029.