Designer Alexis Bittar toasts 25 years of baubles

Alexis Bittar was a 22-year-old college dropout when he sold his first pair of earrings on the streets of Soho. Twenty-five years later, his fans (including Michelle Obama and Lady Gaga) are still clamoring for his fanciful Lucite and semiprecious-stone pieces.

“My goal is to create jewelry that has an element of that awestruck feeling,” says the designer, 46, who lives in Brooklyn Heights.

That provocative-meets playful aesthetic will be on full display next week, when Bittar marks 25 years of lucite designs with his first-ever New York Fashion Week presentation. There, he’ll debut his punk- and urban-themed fall collection (think Mohawk cameos and bondage details) and unveil the four original pieces of art he’s commissioned for the occasion — each one made from Lucite, Bittar’s signature material.

In fact, it was Bittar’s painted- Lucite baubles that caught the eye of Bergdorf Goodman fashion director Dawn Mello in 1992. Not only were his bold bijoux the antithesis of that decade’s stark minimalism, but their accessible price point filled a gaping hole in the jewelry market. (Back then, notes Bittar, “there was nothing between Claire’s and Cartier.”)

Soon his work was landing in stores around the world and in the hands of bigwig stylists like Patricia Field, who decked out the cast of “Sex and the City” in Bittar’s versatile statement pieces. A CFDA award followed, along with high-profile devotees (from Madonna to Taylor Swift) and collaborations with the likes of Michael Kors and Jason Wu.

His brand’s campy ads have long featured “mature” models like Lauren Hutton and Joan Collins. “Not as a slick marketing thing,” Bittar notes, but as a way to combat traditional messaging “that if you’re over 30, you’re done.”

This spring, Iris Apfel, the bespectacled nonagenarian (and Bittar BFF), will star in ads for the designer alongside 18-year-old fashion wunderkind Tavi Gevinson.

But with a dozen standalone boutiques and a design schedule that demands thousands of pieces each year, Bittar’s greatest feat may be his prolific output.

“The freedom to design this much is the ability to really let your creative juices flow,” he says. “I’ve never been one who’s short on ideas.”