Italian jewelry designer and former model Elsa Peretti, the flag of the firm Tiffany & Co., for which she worked since 1974, died last Thursday at the age of 80 in her hometown in the town of Sant Martí Vell (Girona, eastern Spain).) , The jewelry company reported in a statement Saturday.
“Elsa was not just a designer, but a way of life,” stresses Tiffany & Co., adding that, as a “master craftsman, she was responsible for revolutionizing the world of jewelry design.”
“Her collections of organic and sensual shapes have inspired generations,” the company continues, also emphasizing that “over the past 50 years, Elsa has created some of the most innovative jewelry and object designs in the world, exploring nature” with the insight of a scientist and the vision of a sculptor ”.
She also underscores that, as president and founder of the Nando and Elsa Peretti Foundation, she is committed to the memory of her father, “committed to the environment, social welfare, human rights and the preservation of art and culture.”
Born in Florence (Italy) on May 1, 1940, she was the daughter of Ferdinando Peretti, a businessman who founded the oil company Anonima Petroli Italiana (API) in 1933, and was educated in Rome, Switzerland and Milan, where she studied interior design. design and worked for the architect Dado Torrigiani.
In 1964 she became a model and worked in Barcelona, where she came to pose for the painter Salvador Dalí and the photographers Oriol Maspons and Leopoldo Pomés, who were part of the so-called “Gauche Divine” from Barcelona.
Four years later, on the advice of her modeling agency, she settled in New York, and in the early 1970s became one of designer Halston’s favorite models, posing for photographers like Helmut Newton.
She started making jewelery in 1969 for fashion designers in New York, in 1974 she signed a contract with Tiffany & Co to design silver jewelery and in 1979 she was the main maker of the company, for which she designed more than 30 collections.
In 2012, Tiffany and Elsa Peretti extended their professional relationship for another 20 years.
Some of his jewelry designs are in museums such as the British Museum and the Fine Arts museums in Boston, Houston or Indianapolis.
Peretti bought a house in the town of Sant Martí Vell in 1968, which he had been restoring for years, to later acquire and rehabilitate other buildings and even the parish church, having settled in this Spanish town in the 1980s.
Through its establishment, it supported various cultural, scientific, humanitarian, educational, environmental and human rights projects.
The jewelry company with which she has been associated for most of her life has said when announcing her death, “Our hearts go out to her family, her friends and the family of craftsmen who made her fantasies come true. Tiffany & Co. will miss her very much. “