Latest news with #VictoireDeCastellane
Harpers Bazaar Arabia
14-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Harpers Bazaar Arabia
Dior Unveils Its Latest High Jewellery Collection: Diorexquis
Unveiled at Dior's cherished Château de La Colle Noire, Victoire De Castellane transforms Monsieur Dior's private passions – for flora, fauna, and the pursuit of beauty – into poetic, emotionally charged High Jewellery Château de La Colle Noire in Provence was where Monsieur Christian Dior, as he wrote in his memoirs, could set aside his public persona and 'become just Christian again.' It is precisely in this intimate, storied retreat that Victoire de Castellane, creative director of Dior Joaillerie, chose to unveil Diorexquis – a collection that distils Dior's visionary aesthetics for the ladies of the beau monde and blends it with his passions for nature, fantasy, and fairy tales. A deeply personal tribute, it may well be the most 'Christian' collection yet. Victoire, who has helmed Dior's jewellery division since its inception in 1999, has long entertained an imaginary correspondence with the couturier – her eternal muse. She describes Diorexquis as a three-act reverie drawn from Monsieur Dior's inner world. 'Diorexquis unfolds in three chapters: delightful landscapes, delicate bouquets, and fabulous balls,' she explains. 'Each expresses a different facet of the word exquis – French for 'exquisite'.' In creating the pieces, Victoire once again challenges many of the unwritten rules of High Jewellery. In her compositions, a centre stone need not sit squarely at the centre – it may float off to the side or rest at a slant. Gems are not always meant to dazzle outwardly; they may be hidden, reserved for private delight or to achieve a subtle, unexpected visual effect. 'In this collection I played with layering different stones,' says Victoire, 'such as opal or mother-of-pearl, to achieve an iridescent effect with a different result. It's a colour that you don't find in nature, but to achieve it, you have to superimpose many layers of stones. This way I got a very electric blue, for example, in a brooch with night landscapes.' This technique, called the opale doublet, involves mounting a translucent layer of opal on a darker substrate like onyx or mother-of-pearl to achieve a depth and iridescence. It's a meticulous process – requiring both craftsmanship and a painter's eye – that allows colours to bloom from within, rather than sit on the surface. Another, equally enchanting technique is plique-à-jour, an ancient enamelling method revived and reimagined at Dior. 'It adds a new dimension to the bouquets,' she explained. 'Like a miniature stained-glass window, it lets the light shine through and magnify the floral ensembles.' At Dior, where lacquer has long been a signature, this open-backed treatment lends a delicate transparency Inspired by the stained-glass windows in churches, which were once entrusted with translating faith into visual narratives that stirred the soul, Diorexquis unfolds as a series of miniature theatrical compositions. Here, squirrels and deer play hide-and-seek in meadows of diamond and pearl-petalled flowers, while blossoms float across ponds of vivid opals in hues of lavender, mint, and rose. These endearing vignettes come to life across necklaces, bracelets, and asymmetrical earrings that don't simply mirror each other but instead engage in dialogue – each piece revealing a different moment in the fairytale, while also serving as a most unexpected stage for extraordinary gemstones. 'This new High Jewellery collection features several exceptional centrepiece stones with unique shapes and colours, says Victoire, 'including a 25.85-carat sapphire from Sri Lanka, a 10.59-carat Colombian emerald, and a 7.03-carat ruby from Mozambique, as well as an intense yellow diamond of 33.88 carats and two pure diamonds of 8.88 carats each, recalling Monsieur Dior's attraction to this lucky number.' But while the technical wizardry is impressive, Diorexquis excels at bringing to the fore a more intimate facet of Monsieur Christian Dior. His whimsy, his reverence for beauty and the emotions his private pursuits stirred in him, all the while respecting the house's long-established codes – nature, flowers, and femininity. With each high jewellery collection she has imagined over the past 26 years, Victoire has stitched together a fabric of fantasy, part-Dior-heritage-inspired-part-imagination, always rendered with exquisite – or should we say, Diorexquis – elegance. 'Each of my collections leads to the next,' she says. 'I adore the idea of going even further – going where I am least expected.'
Vogue
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Vogue
On the French Riviera, a Shower of Opals and Opulence Courtesy of Dior High Jewelry
With her latest high jewelry collection, called Diorexquis, Victoire de Castellane brought it all back home—literally and figuratively, creatively and personally. True to form, the creative director of Dior jewelry, unveiled a jubilant, playful celebration of color and couture, now amped up with some unexpected materials and lesser-known jewelry-making techniques. It all started with the fragile, fiery, oft-neglected opal—Castellane's forever favorite because it contains all of nature's colors, she explained. From there, she turned her painter's eye to other materials and techniques, broadening her palette with lacquer or plique-à-jour enameling, which produces a stained-glass effect. Diamonds became lace-like overlays or frames for gemstone couture gowns on panels in aventurine glass, a material borrowed from high watchmaking. Using a technique called doublet, she slipped mother-of-pearl or onyx under the opals to play up their natural color fields. As for the bucolic scenes: for all their technical prowess, those were actually rooted in the digital Stone Age. 'When I was little, I used to play with a View-Master for hours on end and spend my time dreaming over old Hollywood films from the '50s and '60s, so these pieces are sort of a precious extension of that,' she quipped. Models pose alongside the Château de la Colle Noire in Provence's reflecting pools. Photo: Courtesy of Dior The runway show featured 163 jewels and 25 couture creations by Maria Grazia Chiuri. Photo: Courtesy of Dior The 'Diorette' high jewelry necklace-slash-lipstick case was created at the suggestion of Peter Philips, creative and image director of Christian Dior makeup. Photo: Courtesy of Dior On Friday, for the first time, Dior hosted the event at its private estate, the Château de la Colle Noire in Provence, where chairman and CEO Delphine Arnault welcomed about 300 VIC guests—most bedecked and bejeweled in Dior creations—for a gala evening. Though this was the founding couturier's last and likely grandest residence, it was also the one where he hoped to live out his days in tranquil simplicity, tending his roses and 'forgetting Christian Dior to become just Christian again,' he wrote in his memoirs. As it turned out, the setting was a discovery for Castellane, too. 'I've only ever seen it in pictures,' she said. 'It's very poetic and nostalgic, like a bygone world in a region that's mythical in so many ways, from the expat years of a century ago to the glamour of its present and for all the emotion it conjures. I would have loved to see it in Dior's day; what a weeklong vacation might have looked like with guests like Jean Cocteau, Mitzah Bricard, and Christian Bérard.' If only those walls could talk. As it was, the ivy-covered façades spoke volumes as the backdrop for an evening that opened with champagne and cocktails in the garden and unfurled into dinner with custom tablescapes by Dior Maison creative director Cordelia de Castellane, a menu by the Michelin three-star chef Mauro Colagreco, and a surprise appearance by the South African soprano Pretty Yende, who performed Puccini's 'O Mio Babbino Caro' and a few other favorites. Opals are Victoire de Castellane's forever favorite because they contain all of nature's colors. Photo: Courtesy of Dior Maria Grazia's creations were striking yet pared back enough to accommodate a single statement necklace or a pileup of jewels, with perhaps a diamond rivière, a pearl sautoir, or brooch at the waist, or a slither of diamonds at the ankle. Photo: Courtesy of Dior And that was just the prelude to the evening's main event: a runway show of the 163 jewels in Diorexquis, and 25 couture creations by Maria Grazia Chiuri, staged around an ornamental reflecting pool that, at 45 meters, stops just shy of Olympic dimensions. The creative director of Dior women's collections struck a regal note with an opulent lineup of painted, embroidered, woven, and beaded looks in velvet. 'She understands how dresses can also be the setting for jewels, and she knows that I consider velvet the most beautiful fabric for them,' Castellane offered.
