EXCLUSIVE: Tiffany & Co. Appoints Lauren Santo Domingo Its First Artistic Director for the Home Category
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LVMH’s Tiffany & Co. upgrade is now coming for the jeweler’s historic homewares division. On Monday, the jeweler announced Lauren Santo Domingo as its first-ever artistic director for the home category.
Santo Domingo — a socialite, longtime Vogue contributor and cofounder and chief brand officer for Moda Operandi — is working in partnership with Tiffany’s housewares design and production team in an advisory capacity. She started with Tiffany in early fall 2022 and is tasked with modernizing what was once a critical category for the jeweler.
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It is understood that Alexandre Arnault, Tiffany’s executive vice president for product and communication, was responsible for Santo Domingo’s hiring.
“Tiffany & Co was originally founded almost 200 years ago as a fancy goods emporium and luxury home goods have always been part of the Tiffany legacy. With the appointment of Lauren Santo Domingo, we look forward to expanding our home category and driving this integral part of our business forward. Lauren’s creative vision and impeccable style will bring a new era of luxury and modernity to Tiffany’s home collection,” Arnault said in a statement to WWD.
“Tiffany & Co. has played a key role in some of the biggest milestones in my life. Like everyone, I have been watching Alexandre breathe new life into the brand and it is an honor to work with Tiffany’s design team to help execute his creative vision,” Santo Domingo said.
Santo Domingo is highly regarded for her taste within fashion circles of a certain globetrotting ilk. Her homes, which span the globe from Colombia to Paris to New York City and the Hamptons, have been widely featured in interior design publications, and she has used these platforms to support up-and-coming talents in the interiors and furniture design space.
“Having developed Moda Operandi’s home category as well as our private label, Moda Domus, I bring a depth of experience in design and a rich understanding of the luxury customer,” she said of her qualifications for this new role.
Santo Domingo’s first collections for Tiffany will be released this April in coordination with the jeweler’s much-anticipated renovated Fifth Avenue flagship reveal. Products are produced across the U.S., Europe and Japan and — in the Tiffany tradition — will continue to include Limoges porcelain and Murano hand-blown glass.
They include six new tabletop motif collections: Tiffany Berries, Tiffany T True, Tiffany Wisteria, Valse Bleue, Tiffany Toile and Tiffany Audubon. Additionally, the collection includes a range of four hand-blown glassware collections called Tiffany Twist, Tiffany Moderne, Tiffany Colorblock and Tiffany Essentials.
The tabletop motifs touch on references across Tiffany’s broad history. Wisteria, for instance, looks to a Tiffany glass lampshade from the early 20th century. Valse Bleue resurrects a pattern first introduced in 1967, while Toile creates a print from important Tiffany iconography like New York City landmarks and Schlumberger’s Bird on a Rock design.
The full collections will be available in Tiffany stores worldwide as well as the jeweler’s website. Select pieces will be available for purchase on Moda Operandi, which is Tiffany’s exclusive wholesale partner for the home category.
Santo Domingo said that her initial focus at Tiffany has centered on finer elements of entertaining. “I’m lucky to have been in the dining rooms of women around the world and I’m keenly aware of what is missing in the fine dining space,” she said.
“Much of the newness in the market over the past few years has been around casual entertaining — crockery in the countryside — but there is a gap in fine dining. As I explored the market, I realized most of the patterns available today were the same as those I was choosing from for my bridal registry over 15 years ago. I think there is a big opportunity to dress elegant tables in formal dining rooms with a more special occasion offering,” Santo Domingo said.
But there will be more casual elements in the future: “We will continue to add new products and seasonal capsules that will bring excitement to our customers, from entertaining poolside to the holidays,” she said.
Santo Domingo’s hire is part of a broader strategy to diversify Tiffany’s most desirable products with a breadth of covetable homeware, accessories and jewelry that has not been seen since the late ’90s. The jeweler’s sterling silver key fobs and bread knives, modernist playing card decks and glass vases were, at one time, an integral part of American gift-giving culture.
Last year, Tiffany chief executive officer Anthony Ledru said he was intent on returning Tiffany to this storied place in the consumer’s mind. “There is a form of generosity around Tiffany, more so than a traditional European jeweler. You come into a Tiffany store and we really feel like you should leave with a Blue Box because of that broad offering. It’s about, ‘When I come to Tiffany, I feel welcome and at ease,’ that is part of the dream of the brand, that we have this universal approach,” he said.
In order to do this, Santo Domingo said: “We will look ahead, but be firmly rooted in the past. This has always been my aesthetic point of view so it’s quite natural to think and design this way.”
Santo Domingo is keenly aware of current retail trends and plans to incorporate them into her work with Tiffany in order to zhuzh up what had otherwise been a sleepy category.
“I plan to add newness and excitement with new drops and capsules; these collections will be seasonal and will come and go quickly,” she said. “I also plan to develop more permanent collections that will live on, and that one day my daughter might select for her own bridal registry, of course. As I’ve learned with my experience at Moda Operandi, women love a good collab. I’ve already approached some of my fashion friends to start plotting tabletop collaborations.”
Santo Domingo will use her curatorial eye to help bring archival designs back into production. Key pieces from Elsa Peretti will lead this effort, according to Santo Domingo. “As Alexandre has done with Schlumberger, restoring the designer’s legacy, he will continue to do with Elsa Peretti. Neither require much updating, it’s simply a matter of elevating their brilliance and reintroducing her work to a new generation,” she said.
“Personally, glassware, silver, and barware from Tiffany and Co. are items I grew up with, in my home, and as gifts given and received over the years: these are the things I’m most excited about resurrecting.”
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