He founded his eponymous label after years spent working with Yves Saint Laurent, however Renaud Pellegrino looked beyond France for inspiration for his latest collection. The accessories designer, who counts Catherine Deneuve, Lauren Bacall and Isabelle Adjani among his fans, collaborated with a Tunisian artist on a limited-edition line of minaudières, with inspiration taken from a Tunis museum. Pellegrino, who launched his label in 1983, teamed up with Farouk Nasraoui on the seven-piece collection, that brings together delicate micro-mosaics in a contemporary silhouette, fusing together the aesthetics of past and present.
“I’ve been looking for the right technique to include mosaics in my collections for a long time,” Pellegrino told Vogue Arabia. “I had the chance to meet Farouk and discover his work while visiting a fair that reunited Tunisian artisans. Farouk’s works are realized respecting ancestral techniques but with a modern eye that gives a twist.” The hand-crafted pieces, sold at the Renaud Pellegrino store in Paris, feature six portraits of women, along with one likeness of Greek legend Poseidon. “We spent a long time visiting the Bardo National Museum in Tunis which features an important collection of mosaics,” Pellegrino said of the collection’s inspiration. “The possibility to translate art into accessories has always been very motivating for me.”
The unique line, entitled Mosaiques, incorporates hard stones and semi-precious stones, with the effect resembling something rare and antiquated. It’s easy to see how some of Pellegrino’s designs have been showcased in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, a Parisian museum dedicated to decorative arts and design. The designer cites his eight years at Saint Laurent as helping shape his approach, revealing “the maison was a pure explosion of creativity and inventiveness which pushed me to… surpass myself”. “The immense talent of Mr. Saint Laurent transported me every season, and each collection was a marvelous moment,” said Pellegrino. “I was very happy to be part of that even if my contribution was just a drop in the ocean.”
The Mosaiques collection is available at Renaud Pellegrino’s Paris boutique on Avenue Victor Hugo.
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