Helmut Newton / Elsa Peretti

Helmut Newton

Elsa Peretti, New York, 1975

Gelatin Silver Print

Elsa Peretti

by Helmut Newton

In 1968, jewelry designer Elsa Peretti first moved to New York, where she worked as a fashion model and began to design jewelry. Her long association with Tiffany & Co. began in 1974, the year before she posed for this photograph in a bunny costume by Halston on a midtown Manhattan terrace. This is one of Newton’s most iconic images.

• BORN
• FLORENCE
• ITALY

Elsa Peretti was a successful model and fully paid-up member of the sixties New York party scene before she started designing jewellery and accessories for her friends, including Halston and Oscar de la Renta. In 1974 she started working exclusively for Tiffany & Co at which she designed her eponymous Diamonds by the Yard, Bean, Open Heart, Sevillana, Teardrop and Bottle collections.

• Peretti was born in Florence on May 1 1940 - the youngest daughter of a wealthy Roman businessman. She later studied interior design at Volbicela School in Rome before relocating to New York to further her modelling career.
• A distinguishing moment in her modelling career was posing with Salvador Dali in 1966 wearing a Paco Rabane dress.
• In 1968, Peretti began designing jewellery for Halston, Oscar de la Renta, Giorgio di Sant'Angelo. One of her first pieces was a small silver bud vase pendant. The vase, holding a flower, made its first public appearance in a Giorgio di Sant'Angelo show in 1969.
• Peretti picked up the Coty Award for Jewellery in 1971.
• In 1973 Halston asked her to design the bottle for his soon-to-be iconic perfume (which became the second-biggest-selling fragrance of all time after Chanel No. 5).
• Peretti posed for Helmut Newton in a Playboy bunny suit for French Vogue in 1975.
• In 1981 Peretti won the Rhode Island School of Design President's Fellow Award.
• To mark the 15th year of Elsa Peretti's association with Tiffany and to celebrate Peretti’s 50th birthday on May 1 1990, jewellery and tableware by Peretti was put on display at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York.
• In 1996, the Council of Fashion Designers of America named Peretti Accessory Designer of the Year.
• Elsa Peretti celebrated her 25th anniversary with Tiffany in 1999 and the company established the Elsa Peretti Professorship in Jewellery Design at the Fashion Institute of Technology.
• In 2001, the designer was presented with an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from FIT.

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