Elsa Peretti Tiffany & Co. Yellow Gold 'Starfish' Collection Pendant Necklace

One of the most resonant jewelry designs of the past half century, Elsa Peretti’s (1940–2021) Starfish necklace is perhaps also one of its simplest.

A five-pronged ornament crafted — famously — in sterling silver, Peretti’s delicate, spare Starfish was one of several designs that rescued the metal, then considered too “common” for luxury, and launched it into the realm of fine jewelry-making. Along with her Bone Cuff and Diamonds by the Yard collection, the Starfish is among the most enduring of Peretti’s mid-1970s jewelry designs, a revolutionary and versatile array of work that boasted universal appeal, specifically to a younger clientele.

After training as an interior designer in her native Italy and working for an architect there, Peretti began her fashion career as a model in Barcelona, Spain, and then for the prominent New York City talent agency Wilhelmina. In 1969, her first design — a two-inch sterling-silver bud vase on a leather rope to be worn around the neck, inspired by a flower vase she discovered at a flea market — was an immediate success after her friend and fashion designer Giorgio di Sant’Angelo included it as part of a line he was developing at the time. As one of Halston’s favorite models, Peretti began designing jewelry for his collections in 1971. A year later, the “Halstonette” had outgrown the catwalk. With her designs garnering their own boutique at Bloomingdale’s in Manhattan, Peretti became a New York staple.

In 1974, Peretti joined Tiffany & Co. with a contract to design sterling-silver jewelry. Her debut collection sold out on its first day. Peretti worked quickly, too. She created many of her — and Tiffany’s — best-known designs within a short time span. Many were mass-produced and affordable; some originally retailing for as low as $18. Over the years, the designer produced dozens of collections for Tiffany. In 2014 through 2016, Peretti’s designs accounted for at least eight percent of Tiffany’s worldwide net sales.

Feminine and bold, the Starfish necklace is available from Tiffany & Co. as part of a collection that includes earrings, cufflinks, a brooch and more. Just as she did with her scorpion, snake and other designs that owe to inspiration she found on shorelines and elsewhere in the great outdoors, Peretti introduced a truly organic piece of jewelry with the Starfish necklace. It’s a pared-down expression of its aptly named echinoderm and a love letter to the natural world.

In an era of social upheaval, venerable Tiffany & Co. designer Elsa Peretti reimagined diamonds as jewelry that working women bought for themselves rather than receiving it from a suitor.

By the time the Italian-born Peretti (1940–2021) arrived in New York City, she’d already studied design in Rome, worked for a Milanese architect and taught Italian, French and skiing in Switzerland. She settled on interior design as her potential career path but then chose an altogether different route: modeling. Peretti modeled in Barcelona, Spain, and on the advice of Wilhelmina Cooper — a former model who’d by then founded Wilhelmina Modeling Agency — moved to Manhattan in 1968. When she relocated, Peretti was inspired to pick up jewelry design.

After modeling for designer Halston, the undisputed fashion king of Studio 54, Peretti became his close friend and collaborator, eventually creating jewelry and teardrop-shaped perfume bottles for him. By way of her association with Halston, Peretti took to the disco scene, flourishing in a social circle that included artist Andy Warhol and fashion designer Giorgio di Sant’Angelo.

It wasn’t long before models on di Sant’Angelo’s runway were donning two-inch sterling-silver vases, complete with a rose stem, suspended on leather thongs around their necks. The accessory was Peretti’s inaugural piece of jewelry — she designed it in 1969 after finding a flower vase at a flea market. It was hardly the only time that Peretti found motifs in nature and in organic forms. In the years that followed, her Bean pendant necklace, Starfish earrings and other sensuous accessories would draw on human emotion as well as the natural world around her. Each evocative and wholly versatile design is universally adored decades later, and each was made for a storied American jewelry house with which Peretti would be associated for nearly 50 years.

It was Halston who introduced Peretti to Tiffany & Co. She had her own boutique at Bloomingdale’s by 1972, and her partnership with the firm, which signed the venturesome and unorthodox designer to an exclusive contract in 1974, would cement her place in the lofty annals of jewelry legend. Peretti’s simple but sophisticated designs — the Teardrop collection, her minimalist Diamonds by the Yard necklace and Open Heart ring, to name a few — elevated sterling silver, previously considered unsuitable for fine jewelry, and created an enthusiastic young audience for Tiffany’s offerings. In 1977, Peretti’s designs earned the jewelry house more than $6 million. (In some years, her work has accounted for 10 percent of the company’s sales.)

In 2012, Peretti signed a 20-year, $47.3 million contract with Tiffany & Co., but she passed away in 2021, at age 80. Today, her designs are in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and the British Museum.

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