Elsa Peretti

Early life

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.

Career

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.

Catalonia, Spain

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 Robert Llimós. 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.

Philanthropy

In 2000 Elsa Peretti was inspired by her late father Nando to create a charitable foundation called the Nando Peretti Foundation (NPF). The NPF focuses on projects aiming at the promotion of human and civil rights, with a special emphasis on the right to education, children's rights, and women's rights and dignity. Over time, The NPF has also supported the requests of unrepresented people, and oppressed minorities for the defense of their right to exist and the preservation of their culture. The NPF awards grants to promote physical and mental health, and to support medical and scientific research projects. It also supports more specific types of intervention, such as the building of entire hospitals or sanitary facilities, and the purchase of technological and medical equipment in advanced, as well as poor countries. It has funded several public awareness campaigns and projects for the conservation of endemic species for wildlife conservation and the protection of the environment. The NPF also became increasingly engaged in the promotion of culture and the arts. In 2015 the NPF changed its name to the Nando and Elsa Peretti Foundation (NaEPF).

Recognitions

Honors

Permanent Collections

Exhibitions