It was undoubtedly Elsa Peretti’s time in New York that thrust her into the public eye: not only for mesmerizing the world with her undulating sterling silver designs for Tiffany Co., but also for her role as a frequent gossip page fixture, a Halston associate, and a Studio 54 patron. A photo of Peretti, snapped by her then-lover Helmut Newton in 1975—dressed as a Halston bunny on a Manhattan terrace, her long legs give the skyscrapers a run for their money—is about as “New York” as it gets.
But the places where Peretti felt truly in her element lay far beyond the Big Apple. She famously found refuge in Spain, rehabilitating the 17th-century village of Sant Martí Vell, where she spent much of her life. But then there were her Italian outposts—after all, being born in Florence in 1940 to an aristocratic mother and an oil magnate Peretti was Italian through and through.
A new book from Apartamento magazine, photographed by Estelle Hanania, The Italian Interiors of Elsa Peretti, offers an unprecedented window into her life in Italy, which was split between two homes: one terrace-wrapped penthouse apartment hovering over the city of Rome and overlooking the gardens of the Villa Borghese; another, a 16th-century watchtower, once part of the Stato dei Presidi, overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea in Porto Ercole.
Peretti’s Roman Apartment
Both properties were brought to life with the help of the visionary Italian architect and interior designer Lorenzo ‘Renzo’ Mongiardino. The two met in the early 1980s when Peretti needed to entrust someone with a complete renovation of her family’s apartment.
“I called him thinking he would never accept,” Peretti said of their first project together. “After all, it was only a flat and he was used to very important projects. But he accepted, I guess more because we liked each other instinctively from the very beginning. Anyhow, I always told him I thought he did that house only to do me a favor.”
In the space, Mongiardino (who was given carte blanche by Peretti) unleashed all the possibilities of Italian craftsmanship into the space. Solid, intricately carved walnut doors were commissioned; antique marble tables were inlaid with semi-precious stones to add beauteous bulk to the rooms; wicker furnishings were added for contrast (and also as a wink to the terrace living the penthouse afforded). Together, the two sourced antique furniture to fill the space—in the living room, all centered around an imposing black marble fireplace.
Underfoot, a waxed tiled floor of alternating pink cotto and slate tiles added visual interest: rhythmic geometric patterns are a signature of Mongiardino. “He once told me that the floor was to a room what the shoes are to the overall elegance of a man,” Peretti once said.
As decorations, you’ll find a collection of Peretti’s curiosities, as well as the flora and fauna she so often turned to for inspiration. (Outside on the terrace, where her father took his languorous breakfasts, Peretti made friends with the crows.)
Not long after the two completed the Roman project did begin yet another, in Porto Ercole. Mongiardino was called upon for the interiors and Loup de Viane worked to craft a garden that could withstand high winds and extreme conditions of the location. Perovskia (Russian sage) was added to the native maquis shrubland, a plant introduced to Peretti by Salvador Dalí, after which she always planted them in her gardens.
Peretti’s Porto Ercole Tower
The 16th-century stone watch tower stands on a cliff that juts down steeply towards the Tyrrhenian Sea, and stands like a relic of another time—but its unrefined beauty attracted Peretti, who had always wanted a tower of her own.
“I think at the beginning his [Mongiardino’s] idea was to decorate it in a very monastic style, adding just a few pieces of furniture,” Peretti is quoted as saying in the Apartamento book’s introduction. “But that was probably too predictable and he came up with the most impressive decorative idea: turning the walls of those rooms into ruins created through the artifice of trompe l’oeil.”
Decorated in sepia hues, the space is warm and inviting with no corner left untouched by Mongiardino. Walls become murals depicting the kind of garden views that the mostly windowless structure cannot provide. Unfortunately, most of these murals have not withstood water damage endured by the tower.
And while the rustic charm of the tower may feel a world away from Peretti’s glamorous life in New York, she never forgot her time in the big city. In 1985, an article published by Christopher Petkanas in W magazine, Peretti explains she bought the Porto Ercole property, with its endless views, “as a liberation from New York, as a revenge for having all those buildings crushing me.”
The Italian Interiors of Elsa Peretti is available now from Apartamento.com.
