Elsa Peretti
| Elsa Peretti | |
|---|---|
| Born |
May 1, 1940 Florence, Italy |
| Education | Volpicelli School, Rome, Italy |
| Occupation | Jewelry designer, philanthropist, former fashion model |
| Website | Official website |
Elsa Peretti is a jewelry designer, philanthropist and former fashion model.
Peretti was born in Florence, Italy on May 1, 1940, as the youngest daughter of Ferdinando Peretti and Maria Luisa Pighini. Her father Ferdinando Peretti (1896–1977) was a businessman who built Anonima Petroli Italiana (API) into one of Italy's leading oil companies.
Educated in Rome and Switzerland, Peretti initially made her living teaching Italian and working as a ski instructor in the German speaking Swiss mountain village of Gstaad, before moving to Milan, Italy in 1963 to pursue a degree in interior design and to work for the architect Dado Torrigiani.
In 1964 Peretti decided to embark on a new career path as a fashion model. After having spent her first couple of years in Barcelona, Spain, she followed Wilhelmina Modeling Agency's suggestion to move to New York City in 1968. ‘Elsa Peretti in Bunny Costume’ is a lasting image of the 1970s by Helmut Newton.
While modelling in Manhattan, Peretti began creating new jewelry styles for a handful of fashion designers including Giorgio di Sant' Angelo and Halston. She was initially inspired by a silver flower vase she had found at a flea market.
Peretti became involved in the drug scene around Studio 54, but was sober by 1971.
By the time Peretti joined Tiffany & Co. as an independent designer, she had already received the 1971 Coty Award and had her first appearance in Vogue magazine. In 1972 Bloomingdale's, one of New York's landmark shopping stores, opened a dedicated Peretti boutique.
In 1974 Peretti joined Tiffany & Co. In 2012 Tiffany and Peretti extended their partnership for 20 years.
In 2013, Peretti was the first non-Catalan person to be awarded the National Culture Award by the National Council for Culture and the Arts (CoNCA). She has had links with Catalonia since the 1960s and has had established relations with artists of her generation. She has provided a great deal of support to cultural, scientific, humanitarian and educational initiatives and for human rights through the Nando and Elsa Peretti Foundation and through the Spanish Elsa Peretti Foundation, always combining past and present, tradition and innovation. Through the Elsa Peretti Foundation she has promoted the visual arts and fostered the consolidation, protection and dissemination of the historical, artistic, cultural, architectural and craft heritage of Catalonia. In the last year she has worked on projects such as the renovation of the interior of the church of Sant Martí Vell, where she often invited guitarist Michael Laucke and painter-sculptor . She also worked on the management of the sixteenth-century historical documents of the town, the conservation of the photographic archive of Oriol Maspons and the conservation of the Roman city of Empúries.
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Wikipedia