Tiffany Olive Leaf Hoop Earrings

When thinking about the colorful gemstones and flashy forms that so frequently characterized 1980s jewelry, it is impossible not to conjure images of the expressive confections that Paloma Picasso created for legendary American luxury house Tiffany & Co. For iconic work such as the Loving Heart ring and the Love & Kisses brooch, Picasso mined what she admired about urban street art in New York City’s grungy subways and brought it to fine jewelry-making on a global stage.

The daughter of artists Pablo Picasso and Françoise Gilot, Paloma was destined for creative success. She was determined to succeed on her own, however, and didn’t rely on her parents' renown. Picasso graduated from the Université de Paris in Nanterre, where she studied jewelry design and costuming. She spent a short period in the late 1960s as a fashion designer and a jewelry stylist for a Parisian theater company, an experience that essentially ignited Picasso’s career. Critics took notice, and her friend and French fashion designer Yves Saint-Laurent commissioned her to make costume jewelry for his runway collections.

Picasso designed a collection of necklaces and bracelets for the Greek jewelry firm Zolotas in the early 1970s, and her success with Saint-Laurent led to an important connection between Picasso and Tiffany & Co. design director John Loring. Picasso jumped at Loring’s request to present a table setting at a 1979 Tiffany & Co. exhibition, and within a single year, Loring commissioned her to design jewelry for the brand. Her first proper collection, Paloma's Graffiti, is her best-known work for the company.

Paloma had joined the illustrious ranks of Elsa Peretti and Angela Cummings — both revered jewelry designers who’d signed contracts with Tiffany just before her. Her Graffiti collection, which initially comprised a range of both slender and bubble-letter-like scribbles, X’s, O’s and other figures in 18-karat gold and palladium, was an extraordinary debut for her. Finding inspiration in Keith Haring’s Pop art as well as the street art that covered Manhattan subway cars of the era, Picasso introduced a graphic quality to her inaugural Tiffany line.

“In the ‘70s, people were starting to tag subways and walls, which had everyone outraged,” Picasso explained of the concepts behind her vibrant rings, earrings and necklaces. “I wanted to look at graffiti differently and try to make something positive out of it.”

Picasso would later draw on nature for her sterling silver-and-pearl Olive Leaf accessories at Tiffany and frequently created gold necklaces and bracelets that were set with a striking mix of colorful semi-precious stones.

Throughout her career, Picasso has garnered acclaim from many institutions such as the Fashion Group International and was presented with an award in 1988 by the Hispanic Designers Council. She has been recognized the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and her work is held in the collections of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and the Field Museum in Chicago.

Find vintage Paloma Picasso Tiffany & Co. brooches, bracelets and other jewelry on 1stDibs.

Rooted in centuries of history of adornment dating back to the ancient world, modern jewelry reimagines traditional techniques, forms and materials for expressive new pieces. As opposed to contemporary jewelry, which responds to the moment in which it was created, modern jewelry often describes designs from the 20th to 21st centuries that reflect movements and trends in visual culture.

Modern jewelry emerged from the 19th-century shift away from jewelry indicating rank or social status. The Industrial Revolution allowed machine-made jewelry using electric gold plating, metal alloys and imitation stones, making beautiful jewelry widely accessible. Although mass production deemphasized the materials of the jewelry, the vision of the designer remained important, something that would be furthered in the 1960s with what’s known as the “critique of preciousness.”

A design fair called the “Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes” brought global attention to the Art Deco style in 1925 and gathered a mix of jewelry artists alongside master jewelers like Van Cleef & Arpels, Mauboussin and Boucheron. Art Deco designs from Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels unconventionally mixed gemstones like placing rock crystals next to diamonds while borrowing motifs from eclectic sources including Asian lacquer and Persian carpets. Among Cartier’s foremost design preoccupations at the time were high-contrast color combinations and crisp, geometric forms and patterns. In the early 20th century, modernist jewelers like Margaret De Patta and artists such as Alexander Calder — who is better known for his kinetic sculptures than his provocative jewelry — explored sculptural metalwork in which geometric shapes and lines were preferred over elaborate ornamentation.

Many of the innovations in modern jewelry were propelled by women designers such as Wendy Ramshaw, who used paper to craft her accessories in the 1960s. During the 1970s, Elsa Peretti created day-to-night pieces for Tiffany & Co. while designers like Lea Stein experimented with layering plastic, a material that had been employed in jewelry since the mid-19th century and had expanded into Bakelite, acrylics and other unique materials.

Find a collection of modern watches, bracelets, engagement rings, necklaces, earrings and other jewelry on 1stDibs.

It is almost impossible to overstate how popular hoop earrings are today. They are routinely seen adorning the ears of high-profile women, ranging from Michelle Obama and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Jennifer Lopez and Cardi B.

The roots of the hoop-earring phenomenon literally stretch back to the dawn of civilization. On view in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Ancient Near Eastern Art gallery is a pair of simple gold hoops from Mesopotamia dating to 2,600–2,500 B.C. that experts agree is among the oldest known examples. Hoop earrings can also be found in the Met’s Egyptian art gallery as well as in the museum’s displays of Greek and Roman art.

What inspired the original hoop design and why it was adopted by so many jewelers in the ancient world are unknown. It doesn’t have an origin story, feeling rather like the jewelry equivalent of the wheel. There just seems to be a logic to a circle that goes from the front to the back of the lobe.

“Hoops have been worn for millennia because they are unfathomably chic,” says Annabel Davidson, the editor of Vanity Fair UK’s special jewelry edition. “The way they accentuate the jawline, elongate the face and add a touch of flamboyance to a look is clearly a timeless expression of confidence, femininity and sartorial savvy.”

Throughout the ages, there have been countless decorative variations of hoop earrings. While the style can be found in just about every era, it was far more popular in some periods than others. Certain looks from yesteryear reflect cultural interests, while others are purely glamourous.

On 1stDibs, shop vintage diamond hoop earrings, gold hoop earrings, contemporary hoops and many more varieties of this wildly popular accessory.