Popular folklore assures us that nothing bad can happen at Tiffany’s—only wonderfully surprising things (and, more recently, incontrovertibly cool things). The storied brand’s design director, Francesca Amfitheatrof, seemingly following this script, was thinking out of the blue box when she set Eddie Borgo a time-traveling challenge: to create a capsule collection fit for the turn-of-the-century sculptor and art patron Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney—an aristocrat, artist, and woman whose haute bohemian sensibility was ahead of her time. For Amfitheatrof, Borgo’s urban luster was equally suited to letting Vanderbilt Whitney’s legacy shine and to bringing new artistic energy to Tiffany. For Borgo, it’s his first foray into fine jewelry, with the pieces handmade in the prestigious workshop above the Tiffany flagship on Fifth Avenue—a coup for the designer, who considers himself “an American through and through.” “What a fascinating New York story—now I walk into the Whitney [Museum] and understand how it came into existence thanks to Gertrude,” says Borgo over lunch in SoHo, heaving a rare biography with yellowed leaves onto the table. Borgo lost himself in the heiress’s family history on a recent trip to Cuba. “She was such a global young girl,” he says. “Traveling by ship, buying her clothes from Paris, absorbing the modern art of the time before setting up her own downtown studio.” (Vanderbilt Whitney’s move to the carriage house that would become her creative bolt-hole was highly scandalous at the time: daughter of cornelius vanderbilt will live in dingy new york alley, read one headline.) A disruptive spirit is felt in the collection. The draped-collar necklace and bracelet play to Borgo’s punky sensibility as much as to Whitney’s obsession with the classical muse (one of her most prominent works is the Titanic Memorial, dedicated in 1931 in Washington, D.C.). The illusion of fluidity and softness that master sculptors achieve with marble, Borgo achieves with structured 18K yellow gold and delicate drops of cultured freshwater pearls. “She collected pearls and adorned herself with them for frequent—and notoriously outrageous—costume parties,” says Borgo, referencing the Vanderbilt family’s outlandish masquerades, which the youthful Gertrude relished. The pearl bar pin, meanwhile, is the height of fin de siècle finesse—but would also look perfectly easy pinned to a drop-shouldered Balenciaga denim jacket. Other pieces—an ear cuff and a pinkie ring among them—are more resolutely of-the-moment. “I love wearing the ring,” says Amfitheatrof. “It’s such an unusual piece—classic, with street edge.” After lunch, as Borgo and I make a pilgrimage to Vanderbilt Whitney’s cavernous Eighth Street studio (where the space is still used as she intended, to host art classes and critiques), Borgo makes an important distinction: With only 80 numbered pieces in this very limited collection, the wearer of Tiffany x Eddie Borgo—from the UES or the LES and from NoHo to Dumbo—will be carrying precious cargo. “It’s less about Tiffany going downtown,” the designer says, “than Eddie Borgo moving uptown.”   Fashion Editor: Alex Harrington Hair: Ilker Akyol; Makeup: Jen Myles  

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