The scene had all the subtlety of a sequined sledgehammer: Liza Minnelli, a performer who has often been measured against her mother, actor Judy Garland, was lounging on a sofa beneath fluorescent Andy Warhol portraits of Garland, Minnelli and her father, director Vincente Minnelli.

Minnelli, 78, was sitting in the living room of an apartment she uses as an office and studio in West Hollywood, California.

Minnelli was wearing a red collared shirt over a black turtleneck and swingy black trousers — no shoes — along with silver bone cuffs and other jewelry designed by her close friend Elsa Peretti.

Peretti, who died in 2021, has long been associated with Tiffany & Co. This is the 50th year that the brand has been selling her pieces. But Minnelli’s relationship with the Italian jewelry designer goes back even further. The women had a mutual friend in Halston, the American fashion designer who introduced them in the early 1970s.

He and Peretti dressed Minnelli for several occasions that would become defining moments in her life. Minnelli wore a yellow Halston gown when she accepted the Oscar for Best Actress in 1973 for her performance in “Cabaret.” In her television special “Liza With a Z,” for which Minnelli won an Emmy in 1973, her wardrobe included several pieces by Halston and Peretti, a white suit and silver bone cuffs among them.

Minnelli said Halston and Peretti helped create what became her signature look, which involved simple lines and slouchy silhouettes that allowed Minnelli — who has always considered herself a dancer first and foremost — to move freely, whether onstage or on the dance floor at Studio 54. “He really invented me, along with Elsa,” she said. “He dressed me and she would dress the dress! It was wonderful what she did.”

Minnelli said her signature look was also shaped by Christina Smith, the makeup artist who gave her the thick eyelashes that became a beauty hallmark. Minnelli found Smith through her work with Cher. “I’ve always loved Cher’s makeup,” she said.

Minnelli, who has scoliosis, said Halston helped her choose clothes that “focused on my face, and the line of my body.”

“The up and down of it all,” she added, kicking a shoeless foot ever so slightly up for emphasis. “He always thought in straight lines for me.”

Peretti is “one of those people who will always be with me,” Minnelli said, while patting the jug-shaped pendant on a necklace she was wearing — a design Peretti created for Halston before producing versions for Tiffany. Minnelli said Halston, who died in 1990, “used to put a little flower in it.”

The bone cuffs Minnelli was wearing in her apartment, she said, were the same ones she wore to the Battle of Versailles, a showcase of American and French fashion designers held at the Palace of Versailles in 1973. She also wore them to the Academy Awards in 2022, when she presented the Best Picture award with Lady Gaga.

“If you put them on right, you have to follow your bone,” Minnelli said of the cuffs. The jewelry’s design is said to have been inspired by human bones Peretti saw as a girl while visiting a crypt in Rome.

Minnelli described Peretti as very casual. “If you talked to her, she wouldn’t tell you anything, which was quite smart actually,” Minnelli said.