Pity the person who comes to rug designer Vidal Sasson for a rug to complement an already furnished room. “The rug should be the first thing people should think about when designing a room, not the last,” said Mr. Sasson, whose company, Rug Art, produces sleek, clean-lined designs for high-profile clients such as David Rockwell and Kevin Bacon. “It’s important to start from the bottom and work your way up. There is a power to a rug; it can pull everything together. We’re creating art for the floor.”

Mr. Sasson’s hand-knotted wool and wool-silk rugs, dreamt up in conjunction with his wife, Sigal, receive much inspiration from the early modernists such as Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier. Made in Nepal, using Chinese silk and Himalayan wool (“very soft, rich with lanolin, which gives it luster,” Mr. Sasson said), the rugs feature simple geometric patterns giving rise to an almost sculptural effect in cool, earth-toned palettes.

Such designs are a world away from the traditional Oriental rugs that Mr. Sasson, 38, was surrounded by as a child. Mr. Sasson, who speaks five languages, grew up in a Sephardic Jewish family in Istanbul, where his father was a textiles manufacturer. “It’s a very big industry in Turkey, with a proud tradition,” he said. “I was always around my father in the factory. I got inspired. Everything was handmade, hand-done. I always had it in my mind that I wanted to design.”

In the late 1970s, Mr. Sasson’s family moved to Israel. There he served in the Army and studied technical and architectural drawing, and met and married his wife. The two moved to New York in 1990, and did a variety of jobs – from working in home stores to designing cast-iron furniture such as bed frames and benches to importing Turkish objects. By the late 1990s, though, Mr. Sasson decided it was time to return to his first passion.

“I was tired of seeing all these traditional Turkish Oriental designs,” said Mr. Sasson. “I really wanted to achieve a modern look with clean simple lines.” He traveled to Nepal (“the wool in Nepal is the best in the world, it’s their treasure”), where he eventually set up a factory. “I wanted to bring a Turkish sense of quality to production,” he said.

In 1999, Mr.Sasson and his wife began jointly designing and producing the rugs. They founded Rug Art in 2000. Ms. Sasson, who is trained as a botanical illustrator and a Venetian plaster artist, provides the color inspiration. (“Anyone can make a rug,” Mr. Sasson said, “but it’s very important to get the colors right.”) They find ideas for designs from a variety of sources. “We start to draw, and it just clicks. One of our most recent rugs was inspired by a picture we took of coral reef during a trip to the Caribbean; we were interested in the interplay of light and dark, the shapes.”

Today, about 200 weavers are employed by Rug Art’s Nepalese factory. There they hand-weave each rug, using centuries-old techniques with a modernist twist – the designs are emailed from New York over to Nepal, where they’ve been converted into digital images with specifications marked for the weavers.

Over the past five years, Rug Art has flourished, working with designers such as Mr. Rockwell and Clodagh Design; Mr. Sasson’s rugs grace the Mandarin Oriental hotel here in New York and the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, as well as the homes of Mr. Bacon, Liza Minnelli, and the Mets’ Mo Vaughn. (Rug Art sells to trade only; an 8-by-10-foot area rug starts at about $5,000.)

“I came here with a suitcase and a few dollars in my pocket,” Mr. Sasson said. “This is our dream; this is what we wanted to achieve.”

Of course, with every dream realized there come complications. And for Mr. Sasson, such recognition increases the frequency he gets asked about the similarity between his name and a certain internationally known hairstylist whose looks defined fashion for decades. “My name is Sasson, not Sassoon,” he replied, in answer to the question if he ever considered changing his appellation. “It’s a different name; it’s missing an ‘o.'” Then he brightens a bit, remembering his consummate salesman skills: “But if you want a haircut, we will do it; it doesn’t matter. If you buy a rug, we’ll give you a haircut,” he said, laughing. “Whatever you want.”

Rug Art, 718-432-8100, www.rug-art.net.