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Elsa Peretti is one of the world’s leading jewellery designers. Her creations for Tiffany & Co. are celebrated in museums and desired by countless women. She is a powerful woman who seeks inspiration walking through the woods that surround the village of Sant Marti Vell.
Queen of Sant Martí Vell
Elsa Peretti is a legend in Sant Marti Vell. The inhabitants of this small village all speak well of “the Señora” that arrived more than 40 years ago with little baggage and many dreams. Today, she owns half the village. She receives us in one of her houses, accompanied her dogs and surrounded by walls full of keepsakes. This is her refuge. This is where she retires to when seeking the peace and quiet she increasingly relishes after a life full of action.
Elsa observes you deeply; her smile is warm and her voice suave. She is a woman who learnt early how to break the mold and who made a name for herself in the world of jewellery even though her life had been set towards quite different destinations. “I escaped from home very young, refusing to be a young conventional bourgeois girl, which had been my role. I felt that my path lay elsewhere.” Her first effort was to become a fashion model. She arrived in Barcelona and soon connected with the “Gauche Divine.” Thanks to her distinct, tall and angular looks topped by short hair, she became the muse of the photographers. “Those were fun years, we were all young and wanted to conquer the world. But we didn’t yet know how. I remember posing for Dalí dressed as a nun in those days!” The photographer Colita first took her to the Empordà. “I fell in love with this region, and when Colita sent me a photo of a house that was for sale one day, I went for it.” That was the first one she bought in Sant Marti Vell. Later Elsa bought more, which she restored without breaking the balance and charm of the village. Thanks to these restorations, the village maintains the dignity of its Mediaeval past.
Queen of Tiffany
Yet Elsa didn’t remain in Sant Marti Vell. Her place was New York City, which she conquered as soon as she arrived there. She hooked up with Halston’s crowd, for whom she designed a perfume flask. Then she started at Tiffany & C., where she ended up tearing up the foundations of the company. With her bean-, heart- or tear-shaped pendants, her lacquered armbands and diamond-set chains that were sold by the foot, she invented modern jewellery. Designer jewellery. And she did it with the most effective of all modes: going from the particular to the universal. She projected herself into her designs and discovered what people sensed they wanted but that didn’t yet exist: modern, simple, and beautiful jewellery.
“When you do something you enjoy doing, it always turns out well,” she comments as she shows us some of her designs. “I find inspiration in nature, in plants, in the simple things that surround us.” Her designs are small objects that want to be stroked, gentle shapes in shining silver. “I take the most pleasure in travelling around the world in search of good artisans. For me, jewellery is a craft you have to do with love. The shapes come from inside, and the hands need to be skilled.” She has craftsmen all over the world, one for pearls, another for silver, yet another for emeralds… “I like to look for my materials in the places they come from and get to know the craftsmen that work them. This way I found a number of people who now work for Tiffany & Co. on my designs.”
When the sun starts to set and that magic hour of dusk approaches, we leave Elsa with her people. She is still going strong, full of energy, and she still has a number of things to do. Yet she also told us that now she wants to initiate a period of peace and quiet and of meditation. “My life has always been very busy, now I want to take it more easily.”
She made moonshine silver fashionable, without a seam, imitating nature with her beans, stars, tears, and hearts that transformed modern jewellery.// CARMINA VILASECA
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