Francesca Amfitheatrof in the Tiffany studio with sketches of her first collection, which launches this month.
The sight, from across the street, of Francesca Amfitheatrof taking in the morning air on the upstairs balcony of her Brooklyn home — a grand, free-standing 1889 Romanesque Revival townhouse in the eclectic neighborhood of Clinton Hill — might almost be an apparition. Lissome and fair, with a profile that calls to mind a John Singer Sargent portrait, she suggests a vision from a bygone era, the original lady of the house. Yet despite her Old World elegance, Tiffany & Company’s first female design director is very much a modern woman. Her sonorous, hard-to-place accent is the fruit of an adventurous life steeped in art, culture and travel. (Her father, a Time magazine bureau chief of Russian-Italian parentage, toured the world for work, while her Italian mother did the same as a public relations executive at Valentino and Armani.) She has lived, at various times, in Tokyo, Rome, Moscow, Manhattan and, for many years until recently, London. Read more.
