Elsa Peretti has died last Thursday at the age of eighty.
Jewellery designer, philanthropist and fashion model, Elsa Peretti has been one of the most successful women ever to work in the jewellery field. Vogue described her work as “carved, pure – irresistibly touchable – it has been called jewellery as sculpture, sculpture as jewellery, and the most sensuous jewellery in the world.”
The Italian-born woman arrived in New York in the late 1960s as a fashion model and soon made her mark as a jewellery designer. She began working for Tiffany & Co. in 1974 and over time her pieces came to account for about 10% of the company’s sales. A successful businesswoman, Peretti was also an exemplar of the stylish, liberated professional woman of the 1970s.
When her first collection for Tiffany was released in 1974, Vogue wrote that “right then, what had been a cult-size ardor exploded into a national passion – suddenly everybody is collecting Peretti. From New York to California, wherever there’s a Tiffany’s, there are lines – and they’re not just-looking-thank-you”.
Stars like Liza Minnelli and Diana Ross wore Ms. Peretti’s pieces on the red carpet. The tennis champion Maria Sharapova wore Ms. Peretti’s earring when she competed at Wimbledon one year. Sarah Jessica Parker, as the Manhattan fashionista Carrie Bradshaw, wore a Bone Cuff in the first “Sex and the City” film. Before and after Kate Middleton married Prince William, she wore Peretti, starting with a Pearls by the Yard bracelet.
Despite her success, the designer always remained humble and she once told The Wall Street Journal : “You need to be able to go out on the street with your jewellery, women can’t go around wearing $1 million.”
[Featured image credits: Duane Michael/Conde Nast Archive]
The Opinionist 