Elsa Peretti’s first jewelry design was a necklace she created for Giorgio di Sant’ Angelo’s fashion collections. She was inspired by seeing women in Portofino, Italy, dressed in precious Pucci dresses carrying single gardenias in their hands. Peretti’s instinct to keep these blossoms alive led her to design a wearable flower vase. She worked with the silversmith Vincent Abad to produce a design inspired by a “found” object, a small vase from a flea market. It was the first design she and Abad conceived together, and it started the pair on a decades-long partnership. The two-inch silver bud vase, slightly lopsided in shape, was originally worn around the neck on a leather cord. Inside the vase, a gardenia—its stem wrapped in a dampened tissue—could live for several hours.