Helmut Newton photographed Elsa Peretti as a bunny in 1975, in a costume by Halston. A large print of the picture leads Phillips’ photographs sale in New York on Thursday 8 October, estimated at $200,000 to $300,000. It is lot 34 of 239, in a sale that starts at 10am in New York, 16.00 in Italy. Beside it are Richard Avedon’s Dovima with elephants, in an evening dress by Dior, Irving Penn’s Bee on Lips and a Newton diptych from 1981. Peretti, born in Florence in 1940, had begun designing for Tiffany the year before the picture was taken.
Lot 34, printed at 101.6 centimetres
The print is big. On Phillips’ lot page it is a gelatin silver print, printed later, with an image of 101.6 by 65.4 centimetres, signed, titled and dated in pencil on the back, and it comes from what Phillips calls an important Middle Eastern collection. The setting, according to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, which bought a colour version of 153.1 by 102 centimetres, printed in 2010, is the terrace of Peretti’s own New York apartment, in November 1975, and the picture belongs to Newton’s series White Women. The image has been to auction before. A smaller print, 58.9 by 39.5 centimetres, sold at Phillips in London in September 2020 for £81,250, above its estimate of £40,000 to £60,000. The New York print is far larger, and the estimate follows the size.
Avedon’s Dovima, Penn’s bee and a Newton diptych
Lot 32 is the evening’s other fashion picture. Richard Avedon photographed Dovima with elephants at the Cirque d’Hiver in Paris in August 1955, and this print, 58.7 by 47.6 centimetres and numbered 26 of 50, is estimated at $120,000 to $180,000. According to Artnet, the dress was the first design Yves Saint Laurent made for Dior, at 19, and the picture ran in Harper’s Bazaar in September 1955. Large prints of the same image have made far more: Artnet records $1,153,011 at Christie’s in Paris in 2010 and $1,815,000 at Christie’s in New York in 2020, each an auction record for the photographer at the time, which explains the gap with a smaller print. Newton’s Sie Kommen, Dressed and Naked, Paris, a diptych of 1981, is estimated at $200,000 to $250,000. Irving Penn’s Bee on Lips, a dye transfer print of 1995 from an edition of 11, carries $120,000 to $180,000, and Avedon’s 1957 portrait of Marilyn Monroe $80,000 to $120,000.
239 lots, from Cindy Sherman to Ellen von Unwerth
The sale has chapters. A section called A Focused Life gathers 60 works from a single collection, and a Spotlight of 13 lots comes from a private collection in London, which is where the Marilyn Monroe portrait sits. ULTIMATE, Phillips’ selection of rare works, reaches its 24th edition with 26 pieces, among them Cindy Sherman’s Untitled #410, from 2003, estimated at $120,000 to $180,000, and 14 unique Polaroids by Ellen von Unwerth, shown in New York for the first time. Sally Mann’s The New Mothers, of 1989, and Peter Hujar’s Candy Darling, of 1973, complete the range at lower estimates. An online sale, Exposure, stays open until 13 October.
“Our October auction reflects photography’s remarkable ability to shape culture, capture history, and inspire new generations of collectors.” Vanessa Hallett, Deputy Chairwoman, Americas and Worldwide Head of Photographs, Phillips, 24 September 2026.
Elsa Peretti, from Florence to Tiffany
Peretti was born in Florence on 1 May 1940, according to the Nando and Elsa Peretti Foundation. She worked for Halston and for Giorgio di Sant’Angelo, the British Museum notes, and in February 1974 Halston and the fashion editor Carrie Donovan introduced her to Tiffany & Co., where, in the museum’s words, she “revolutionised the popularity of silver jewellery”. She died in Spain in 2021. When Newton photographed her, she was 35 and a year into her work for Tiffany. Newton himself was born in 1920 and died in 2004. It is a photography week in New York: Sotheby’s holds its own photographs sales in the city on the same days. In Paris this autumn, Newton and Avedon also figure in Remember Me at the Bourse de Commerce.
The Luxury.it perspective
Lot 34 is a fashion picture of a jeweller. In 1975 Peretti was a year into her designs for Tiffany, and the image, taken on her own terrace in a Halston costume, ties together three names of New York fashion in the 1970s: Newton, Halston and Peretti. That is why it interests collectors of jewellery and fashion as much as collectors of photography. For anyone following the sale, the useful comparison is size, not the photographer’s records: the same image made £81,250 in London as a print of 58.9 centimetres, and this one measures 101.6. Phillips posts results on its lot pages as the sale goes.
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The 90s at Tate Britain · Van Gogh at Sotheby’s · Art Basel Paris and Frieze London · LVMH Journées Particulières
