Tiffany & Co Designer: Paloma Picasso

Paloma Picasso is the youngest daughter of 20th-century artist, Pablo Picasso and painter/writer Françoise Gilot. Her own artistic career began in 1968 when she became a costume designer in Paris. After her rhinestone necklace designs, crafted out of inexpensive flea market finds, gained recognition and admiration from critics, she enlisted in jewelry classes to hone her skills. Soon Yves Saint Laurent tapped her to design accessories for his collection. By 1971 Paloma was working for the Greek jewelry company Zolotas.

John Loring, senior vice-president of Tiffany & Company, noticed Paloma’s talent for lavish, bold pieces, and asked her to create a line for the company. Paloma had always wanted to design for the American firm and quickly accepted, eager to have a venue that appealed to a wider audience. Paloma told the New York Times, “I went into all the great jewelry shops of Paris.

They are so grand, the salespeople seem to look down on you. As a customer you feel threatened. Tiffany is a great place because all kinds of people come in, just like Woolworth's.” Her pieces for Tiffany & Co. priced from just over $100 to $500,000 were meant to appeal to a variety of shoppers. Her designs mixed color and varying gemstones incorporated into bold designs. The dove symbol, and the color red have become Picasso’s signature look. Loring said of her designs “Paloma has taken the gaudiness out of jewelry but kept the glitter.” Tiffany & Co.’s President, Henry B. Platt, noted the legendary aspect of the Picasso name, “for the first time, people can hold a Picasso in their hands and try it on.”

Paloma strives to create jewelry with longevity and timelessness more permanent than the quickly changing “superficial” trends of fashion. Her own sense of personal style, flare for glamour, and unabashedly lavish scale gained her instant recognition as jewelry’s newest star. Picasso’s early collections spotlighted her love of vibrant colors and bold design, using fiery orange opals and pink tourmalines as well as “Scribbles,” “Graffiti,” and “X’s” in her designs.

In 1980 Picasso began designing jewelry for Tiffany & Co. of New York,UK Tiffany .Her early creations mixed color and varying gemstones in bold designs. She had long used the dove symbol and the color red as signatures of her work which she exploited throughout her career.People are crazy about her designs tiffany rings ,necklace ,etc.

Soon Picasso branched into new areas of design when in 1984 she began experimenting with fragrance, creating the very successful “Paloma” perfume for L’Oréal. Her husband, Lopez-Cambil, developed the visual image for the perfume with red and black packaging and shaped bottle. In the New York Post Picasso described it as intended for “strong women like herself”. A cosmetics and bath line including body lotion, powder, shower gel, and soap were produced in the same year.

In 1987, she created her own color, Mon Rouge, for L’Oréal. Encased in a gold-colored cylinder, the lipstick was a shiny icon of the era’s big-shoulder-pad glamour and became a top-seller in Europe. Mon Rouge is no longer manufactured, and Picasso’s stockpile, which she stores in her refrigerator (and refuses to let out of her sight, ergo no photo), is slowly dwindling.

In 2000, Picasso, known for her bold colors and books, took her home accessories in a new direction. The once bright primary colors gave way to gray, gold, and tan. This shift was also reflected in Picasso’s personal appearance since she dispensed with the fire truck-engine-red lipstick favored by her since the age of 17.

Picasso briefly lost interest in designing following the death of her father in 1973, at which time she played Countess Erzsébet Báthory in Polish filmmaker Walerian Borowczyk’s erotic film, Immoral Tales (1974), receiving praise from the critics for her beauty. She has not acted since.

The breathtaking beauty and stunning originality of Tiffany jewelry have long captivated the world. Worn by movie stars, fashion models, musicians, athletes and women of achievement, these spectacular designs add glamour and elegance to red carpet events as only Tiffany can.

Angelina Jolie in a Calife ring by Paloma Picasso® at the L.A. premiere of “The Tree of Life.”