Elsa Peretti, the fashion model turned jewelry designer whose elegant, sculptural creations for Tiffany & Company revolutionized tastes in accessories and repositioned sterling silver as a luxury material, died on Thursday night at her home in Sant Martí Vell, a village in Catalonia, Spain. She was 80. The death was confirmed by Kurt Moosmann, a board member of the Peretti family office in Zurich. He said she had died in her sleep but did not specify the cause. After arriving in New York in the late 1960s, Ms. Peretti was an immediate hit as a runway model for designers like Halston, Issey Miyake and Giorgio di Sant’Angelo. One day she decided that she wanted to try her hand at designing a piece of jewelry, inspired by something she had seen at a flea market. She took her idea — a tiny sterling silver bud vase to be worn as a pendant on a leather cord — to a silversmith in Spain and had it made. A model wore it in the next Sant’Angelo fashion show, people noticed, and Ms. Peretti’s design career took off. Tiffany, which hadn’t carried silver jewelry for a quarter of a century, signed her in 1974. Ms. Peretti, far right, in New York in 1974 with the designer Halston and her fellow models, from left, Shirley Ferro, Carole Mallory, Betsy Theodoracopulos and Berry Berenson. Ms. Peretti, far right, in New York in 1974 with the designer Halston and her fellow models, from left, Shirley Ferro, Carole Mallory, Betsy Theodoracopulos and Berry Berenson.Credit...Jill Krementz, all rights reserved Ms. Peretti had a few other ideas. The absolutely minimalist Bottle pendant, her first design, was inspired by antique vases. The Open Heart pendant was tilted just off center; she sometimes said she had been inspired by the open spaces in Henry Moore’s sculptures, but in another interview, for The New York Times Magazine, she identified Alexander Calder’s work as the inspiration. The Bone Cuff bracelet, often worn in pairs, was inspired by the human bones (of monks) she had seen inside a 17th-century church when she was growing up. Gal Gadot wore one in 18-karat gold in the film “Wonder Woman 1984.” The Bean was deceptively simple, the sort of jewel women could wear every day; it looked like a lima bean but symbolized the beginning of life. And the Diamonds by the Yard collection began with a necklace of 12 small diamonds unevenly spaced along a 36-inch chain. Stars like Liza Minnelli and Diana Ross wore Ms. Peretti’s pieces on the red carpet. The tennis champion Maria Sharapova wore Ms. Peretti’s earrings when she competed at Wimbledon one year. Sarah Jessica Parker, as the Manhattan fashionista Carrie Bradshaw, wore a Bone Cuff in the first “Sex and the City” film. Before and after Kate Middleton married Prince William, she wore Peretti, starting with a Pearls by the Yard bracelet. (This story is directly quoted from Elsa’s obituary in the New York Times by Anita Gates)https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/21/fashion/elsa-peretti-dead.html?searchResultPosition=10

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