In 1900, the Tourneau family established a watch selling business in the Russian Empire, fleeing to Paris after the Revolution before emigrating to New York City in 1924. The Tourneau brothers opened a small dressmaking shop, with a watch counter, in the Berkshire Place Hotel. They followed this with the company's first full shop at Madison Avenue and 49th Street in 1930. In 1940 a second location was founded in the Pennsylvania Hotel across from Penn Station. The first west coast store was opened during the 1990s in the South Coast Plaza mall in Costa Mesa.