Design has always surrounded Kouros Maghsoudi, who was born in the Frank Lloyd Wright suburbs of Chicago to parents who owned a boutique women’s clothing store and Persian rug galleries. After earning his degree in sustainable architecture and urban design and joining an environmental nonprofit, he debuted his own furniture collection, called Mehmooni, which draws directly from his Persian culture but is tinged with playful postmodern motifs that encourage people to indulge.

A self-taught multidisciplinary artist and designer, Kouros's approach is steeped in an investigation of future cultures, gathering cues from fashion and metropolitanism. Kouros' fantasy is unapologetically tinged with sex, liberation, opulence, and self-indulgence.