Tapping and clapping, guitar and singing, joy and quejío. Since she left two years ago, the friends of Elsa Peretti, a legendary jewelry designer, a fundamental reference for Tiffany’s, among many other tasks and passions, celebrate her life and her work with a party, a concert, a spoken album of memories of everything he did (almost nothing was left in the inkwell or on the agenda) or a flamenco revelry, one of his many joys for the soul.
Life and death resonate in the strings of the guitarist, in the vocal chords of the cantaor, in the rumble of the bailaoras, in the viewer’s goosebumps. Clapping, pam pam pam. “your eyes are worth flows”, says the coplilla.
Calling Elsa Peretti (1940-2021) polyhedral would be an understatement. Evoke her as an intellectual force and a creative whirlwind, idem. His great strength lies in the survival of his work and his legacy, which spreads and continues to germinate in New York, in Barcelona and in Sant Martí Vell, in Gironés, a small town where he bought a house and rebuilt it, to later restore more. houses and outbuildings around it, was his penultimate project.
The penultimate was to launch the Teatre Akadèmia in Barcelona. The last one, without wanting it, was to transcend. The north wind and the bales of straw in the middle of the mown fields also come standard in these pages that smell of saltpeter and are perfumed by the cremat of Havana nights.
Peretti was born on May 1 and passed away on March 18. And yet, his legacy can be followed like a treasure map since at the age of 21 he wrote a letter to his father, imprenditore, president of an oil company, renouncing his bourgeois and wealthy life and launching into the world without a parachute. .
“From Milan to Switzerland, to Portlligat, where he met the photographer Maspons, then he would arrive in New York,” Stefano Palumbo, who is a member of the board of directors of the Nando and Elsa Peretti Foundation, recalls over the phone.
Halfway between the late sixties and early seventies, Peretti put down roots in Barcelona, ??where he frequented and was part of the Gauche Divine with Serena Vergano, Maspons, Xavier Corberó and Robert Llimós, among others. At the same time, he caused a lady revolution, first as a model for the ubiquitous Halston, and then in the world of jewelry when he presented his models at Tiffany’s just at a time when the brand immortalized by Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s needed to modernize.
“What could be done new? She contributed the silver in the jewelry and that was something revolutionary at the time for her because it was not a metal considered precious up to that point. Elsa was looking for perfection. She worked with metal herself, learning from the master craftsman at Laboratorio Abad”, explains Palumbo, who recalls that all the icons that are still sold in the famous jewelry store (and all its branches) are still made in Barcelona, ??in Poblenou.
To understand the dimension of Peretti’s work and its validity, it is necessary to make a few notes. The British Museum has in its collection more than 300 pieces by the Florentine designer. Vogue spoke of her without half measures “she is the most successful designer who has ever worked in the field of jewelry, without discussion.”
“There were lines outside Tiffany’s to see their new models,” recalls Palumbo. The Bone bracelet, the Open Heart pendant or the Wave ring are three timeless classics that continue to sell. There have been times when 10% of Tiffany’s sales were attributed to Peretti jewelry.
The Peretti spirit, distributed among so many latitudes, flutters in Sant Martí Vell, in New York (those nights at Studio54…), and in Barcelona among Toni’s guitar chords, Mariano’s palms, Candela’s fingers like paws that from so much commotion she loses the carnation she was wearing in her hair and falls on the stage. The show goes on. From where should our protagonist be looking at him?
