MilliOnAir Magazine Winter Edition | Page 20

Upon Sonia’s death in 2015, it was discovered that her entire 800-piece archive had been left within the inheritance to her Nephew Elio and his wife, Maria Leoni-Sceti. With no children of her own, Sonia greatly admired and felt an infinity to the couples own free-spirited and International life; Maria and her husband have lived in seven different Countries with each of their four children born in a different one, garnering four languages between them.

Born in America, Maria studied economics at Wake Forest University in North Caroline where she left with a BA Hons, before completing her Masters in International Management at Thunderbird, Phoenix USA.

Her first job was at Saatchi and Saatchi, enabling her to learn skills that would soon prove essential for her own brand journey. Maria and her husband now live between London and Rome.

Every jewel has a story to tell, and Sonia Petroff’s couture jewels, born in La Dolce Vita, in the fashion frenzy of the 60s, tell Petroff’s own personal story of adventure and adversity, of glamour and audacious, vivacious style.

Born in 1933 in Budapest to a Belgian mother and a Bulgarian diplomat father, who was Ambassador to Hungary at the time, Sonia Petroff Tchomakoff enjoyed an early childhood of cultivated privilege. Her grandmother was lady-in-waiting to Queen Eleonore of Bulgaria. She grew up steeped in Eastern European aristocratic traditions, parties, balls and rich, ceremonial jewels. However, during the War, the family was forced to flee, escaping first to Switzerland, then Romania, and finally, after the War, leaving all behind, to Argentina.

It was in Buenos Aires, in the early 1950’s, that Sonia began to create costume jewellery, which she loved, she said, because she found it “flattering to women”. She made a necklace, and a local boutique ordered twelve immediately, so that Sonia was encouraged to continue, especially when she moved back to Europe and settled in Rome, at the height of La Dolce Vita.

She established her own brand, enjoying great success and building a name for herself whilst also designing for couture houses including Balmain, Valentino and Nina Ricci. As her father wrote, Sonia was “the only one in the family earning any money.” With her innate sense of style, striking beauty and gregarious personality, she was part of the social jet-set, a guest at the most-glamorous, star-studded, high society parties and weddings, spending summers on the Italian Riviera or the Greek islands, winters in Gstaad. The social world was her life.