The consummate aesthete, Christian Dior was as fluent in gardens and perfume, art and gastronomy, as he was in couture. He made his worlds collide in swirls of silk, ribbon, and embroidery, alluding to his gallerist roots in trompe l’oeil flourishes, translating his green thumb into rose brocades and tulip silhouettes. He knew: A life of beauty is an endless source of inspiration. Victoire de Castellane, the Dior maison’s mastermind of haute joaillerie, knows it too. Her every jewel is an homage to the founder’s passions, reborn as an exquisite gem-flecked treasure. They have led her here, to her most ambitious tribute yet.
THE INHERITANCE “After women,” Monsieur Dior once said, “flowers are the most divine creations.” De Castellane has long taken this to heart. See her many odes to his beloved rose: Le Bal des Roses (2011), La Rose Dior (2021), and the Rose des Vents motif, now a house signature. Or the gems of her Belladone Island collection, each one named for an imaginary exotic plant, which she revealed amid Monet’s water lilies at the Musée de l’Orangerie in 2007. And now Dior’s two greatest loves, couture and gardens, have been spun into a new collection, Les Jardins de la Couture, her biggest to date.
A NEW NARRATIVE The 170 pieces made their debut in June in the verdant gardens of Villa Erba, on Lake Como, on models wearing floral couture dresses created for the occasion by Maria Grazia Chiuri. It was a glittering epic told in four chapters. Shown here: Buissons Couture, a fairytale suite of exuberant bouquets and garlands. A 12.14-carat Mozambique ruby takes center stage in this necklace, which can be worn three ways—because what are flowers if not nature’s little masters of reinvention?
THE REPERTOIRE EXPANDS The Buissons are an intricate mosaic of gemstone petals. Each ruby, spinel, spessartite garnet, and pink sapphire has been meticulously set by hand, one by one, to give the pieces a flexibility and lightness of being—the ephemeral nature of flowers ingeniously refined into delicate, but eternal, heirlooms. And another beautiful chapter written in l’histoire Dior.
Christian Dior in the garden of his country retreat in Milly-la-Forêt.
This story appears in the October 2023 issue of Town & Country.
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