The Artistry and Joy of Paloma Picasso

Picasso at the 30th anniversary party for Yves Saint Laurent in 1992 (left) and the jewelry designer with the fashion designer in 1983.

The Saint Laurent show that opened Paris Fashion Week a couple of days ago gave off all kinds of nostalgia vibes. It celebrated part of a period when Paloma Picasso was Yves Saint Laurent’s muse and a powerful presence as a jewelry designer at Tiffany & Co. And this isn’t the first time Saint Laurent designer Anthony Vaccarello has referenced Paloma. His Spring/Summer 2022 collection was an homage to her alone. It echoed Yves’s 1971 collection inspired by a 1940s dress Paloma picked up at the flea market and wore around Paris.

Following is a primer about the jewelry designer who is now 76 years old. There is not a book about her life and work, despite being an influential fashion figure and her 45-year long career at Tiffany. It is long overdue. Some of my favorite vintage pieces from Paloma’s Tiffany collection appear throughout this story.

“Jewelry makes us feel great and it makes us more beautiful, but if it can make us smile, all the better.” —Paloma Picasso

Paloma Picasso wearing her citrine and gold necklace in 1985.

“It redefined ‘real’ jewelry in a modern sense,” is how Vogue described Paloma Picasso’s first collection for Tiffany in 1980. At a time when “real” jewelry was expected to have diamonds, Picasso designed with semiprecious stones.

The sophisticated way she handled the gems infused the stones with glamour. “She would take a citrine and make it look as important as a canary diamond,” proclaimed legendary Vogue accessories editor Candy Pratts Price.

What the press saw as a bold move away from diamond jewelry was intuitive for Picasso. “I like big stones and with semiprecious stones you can work in really large sizes,” explained the designer when I interviewed her for Bejeweled, a book I co-authored with Penny Proddow. “I guess that comes from being the child of two painters.”