By Kat Herriman
Elsa Peretti for Tiffany & Co. Bone Cuff, Bone Cuff bracelet, Split ring, and Diamonds by the Yard earrings.
Model, French tutor, interior designer, ski instructor; Elsa Peretti lived many lives before becoming the world-famous designer and fashion icon she is remembered as today. Despite their eclecticism, the past lives of Peretti give us one of the most intimate windows into the Italian designer’s work and its concerns.
Elsa Peretti purchased and restored more than two dozen houses and buildings in Sant Martí Vell, Spain.
All these origin stories come to life at Peretti’s sprawling Spanish retreat in Sant Martí Vell, a particularly beautiful alcove of Spain’s Catalonia region, in which she bought in 1972 and expanded over time. The designer originally acquired a single cottage as a quiet place to recharge. She didn’t know then the importance this location would later serve, as both a laboratory and sanctuary for her sculptural practice.
An archival photo of the designer studying one of her favorite subjects, snakes; a Snake necklace overlays the photo.
The cottage originally came into Peretti’s life four years after she relocated to New York from Barcelona as a model and two years before she sold out her first jewelry collection for Tiffany & Co. on day one of its release and tied up blocks of Fifth Avenue with swells of her eager fans. It served as Peretti’s anchor throughout this big transition as she catapulted from relatively obscure model into the only Halstonette that the influential fashion designer trusted enough to consult on jewelry.
Equestrian accessories, inspirations, sketches, and magazine clippings were saved in the house where Peretti kept her horses.
As Peretti’s reputation as a Halston muse, jewelry maker, and It girl grew, so did her compound in Spain. When she passed away in 2021, one small square of Sant Martí Vell had ballooned into something more substantial: a total of 18 houses, in addition to three masias (country homes). The expanded Peretti compound reminds one of Marfa, where Donald Judd maintained several properties—which are preserved in the condition the godfather of minimalism left them—and provide much-needed context for a figure who was ultimately interested in the integration of art and life. Strolling through Peretti’s properties, one is struck by how much the strange experience of being alive was the subject matter and concern of her work.
An hour or more drive from Barcelona, Sant Martí Vell feels remote, like a place lost in time. The distance from city life brings nature closer; its beauty and danger are enhanced in equal measure. This intimacy with the wild gives bite to anecdotes about running into scorpions, and how those kinds of beach days can end up translating into one of the most iconic insect-inspired necklaces of all time. Death doesn’t feel so far away in Sant Martí Vell. The past is close, and this proximity to antiquity makes you appreciate your own limited time here on earth. It is no wonder that Peretti found inspiration again and again in the forms (skeletons) we leave behind. It was fittingly during this excursion to the past with Peretti that Tiffany & Co. decided to share some big news about their future. The luxury house has done what they are encouraging the next generation to do: return to the archive. It seems that trips to the Peretti compound have yielded exciting fruits for all: Tiffany & Co. has decided to release three new designs inspired by the Peretti vault, including an 18k gold Bone Cuff set with a pavé-diamond teardrop. You can find these looks and more at Tiffany & Co.’s new Peter Marino–designed flagship at Bal Harbour Shops.
