An open heart and diamonds by the yard. “Take away, take away.”
When her first collection for Tiffany was released in 1974, Vogue wrote that “right then, what had been a cult-size ardor exploded into a national passion—suddenly everybody is collecting Peretti. From New York to California, wherever there’s a Tiffany’s, there are lines—and they’re not just-looking-thank-you.” Those customers were snapping up Peretti’s curvilinear pieces in sterling silver—not gold. This, the magazine would later note, turned the idea of what constituted fine jewelry on its head, and also affected who was buying it. In a break from tradition, women were shopping for themselves rather than being gifted jewelry by men. “Take away, take away,” is how she described her process to Vogue in 1986.
Finding fame dizzying, Peretti retreated to Spain, to the village of Sant Martí Vell, where she had bought a compound in 1968 and started to revive it one building at a time. Peretti led an ascetic, unhurried, and happy existence in Catalonia (perhaps somewhat akin to that of Georgia O’Keeffe in Taos, New Mexico) that she found conducive to creation. “Of course, I’m slow,” she told Vogue. “I have to crystallize a form, find the essence. It’s a continual training to be essential in your work, and then you have to be essential in your life too.”
In light of the fact that Peretti was known for her largesse and for quietly supporting her friends, it seems fitting that one of her best-known pieces is an open heart.
