Victoire de Castellane has been creating jewelry for Dior for twenty years. An aristocrat from the oldest French family became the first designer of the Dior jewelry line and introduced the trend for multicolored jewelry.

All the jewelry that Victoire makes can not only be worn and admired, but also displayed in museums. When she was very young, she came to Chanel and worked there, next to the great Karl. She recalls this as the happy years of her life.

Biography of the jeweler Victoire de Castellane

Karl Lagerfeld knew Victoire from childhood. Her uncle Gilles Dufour worked with him at Fendi. Lagerfeld often called them at home, and little Victoire called her uncle to the phone: "You are Karl again." She came to Chanel not under the patronage of Karl, just one of Victoire's friends invited her there for practice. After the internship, Karl left her at the House and entrusted her with jewelry. She worked there for almost 14 years.

Then Victoire moved to Dior, where she was invited by Bernard Arnault. Then the brand's jewelry business was just beginning, and what it will be in the future - everything depended on Victoire. Initially, she was given complete freedom to create, and Victoire became an independent designer. And freedom for an artist is of great importance, because if it weren't for it, nothing special might come out. Masterpieces are born only in freedom.

By the way, as a little girl, Victoire did not like school at all, she made her feel like a prison. It is another matter to be at home, among the closest cousins ​​and cousins.



Victoire's love of jewelry was probably from her grandmother (her father's mother, Sylvia Hennessy), who loved to dress beautifully and wear jewelry. She changed her jewelry, as well as outfits - several times a day. And little Victoire looked at them with special pleasure, they seemed to her so huge, bright, delightful.

Later, she said that she remembered not only the jewelry in which smartly dressed ladies appeared in their family, but even the noise of these jewelry. One Christmas, Victoire was presented with a toy box with plastic decorationswhere there was a ring with "emeralds". Then she first felt like a princess.



Victoire showed her creative abilities at the age of five, making earrings from her grandmother's bracelet, and at 12 she melted her mother's gold medallion to make a ring out of it. As a child, the girl often listened to the stories of relatives from the life of her great-grandfather Boni de Castellan, who was a friend of Marcel Proust and the prototype of Robert de Saint-Loup "In Search of Lost Time."

Now Victoire has a lot of antiques, antiques inherited by inheritance. Her favorite stone is opal, which sparkles with all the colors of the rainbow. In general, in each stone she tries to discern beauty, character, unusual shape, color, charm. But opal remains the most beloved today. For example, the collection Dior el dʹ Opales - a brilliant ode to this mysterious stone.



When asked if it’s boring to work with the same stone for so long, she replies - “… Each piece is unique - even in terms of color: there are blue, yellow, black, blue stones… Opal is a stunning landscape… It's like looking from the sky into the ocean, into which you want to plunge headlong. ... and scary and curious at the same time ".

Opal is a fragile stone. It is not easy to work with it, but what is the effect of it in jewelry. Opal color echoes with hints of tourmalines, sapphires, diamonds, garnets.

How does the designer herself suggest wearing jewelry?

Victoire de Castellane is against all rules. It is thanks to her talent as a designer that she knows how to combine any stones and precious metals, turning products into masterpieces of jewelry art.Victoire de Castellane believes that jewelry should bring joy to a woman and make her more beautiful. Taking the position of creative director in 1999, she began to be guided by these principles.

For the 20th anniversary of the Dior Joaillerie jewelry line, Victoire de Castellane has released a new collection of Rose Dior Pop jewelry. And as you might guess right away, the inspiration was roses, Christian Dior's favorite flowers.



In the collection Rose dior pop the rings are made of 18-carat pink and white gold, decorated with diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, rubies, paraiba tourmalines, tsavorites (tsavorites) and spinels. Despite its brightness, jewelry fits perfectly into any image and style. Each ring costs almost $ 30,000.

Each designer's product is a work of art, and flowers, fairy tales, including Alice in Wonderland, Walt Disney cartoons, and manga comics often serve as inspiration. But the main idea of ​​each collection is the pages of the life of the famous couturier - Christian Dior.



Creating a new collection, Victoire de Castellane seems to open a new page, from which we learn facts from the biography of Dior, his habits, manners, hobbies, tastes. This is how we learned about the designer's passion for gardens and roses. Victoire de Castellane has dedicated more than one collection to roses - Rose dior pre catelan and Rose dior bagatelle - 2000, Bal de roses - 2011.

Rose Dior Pré Catelan - the collection is named after the famous botanical garden in Paris. Christian Dior's favorite roses, which he grew in his garden, inspired the couturier to create his beautiful creations. Now Victoire also creates exquisite jewelry dedicated to this royal flower.

Rose Dior Pré Catelan jewelry is unusually diverse in its rich color gamut of stones - from delicate pastel shades (white coral, rose quartz, blue chalcedony) to bright saturated ones (red coral, onyx).



The jewelry is cut by hand with painstaking many hours of processing. In addition, all Rose Dior Pré Catelan products have rather impressive dimensions and original details in the form of a bee on a flower or a diamond dewdrop frozen on a stem.

Collection Rose dior bagatelle takes its name from the rose garden of the Bagatelle Park in Paris. The park is beautiful with its luxurious flowers, more than 10,000 rose bushes and 1200 varieties grow in it. The Victoire de Castellane roses are studded with precious diamonds that meet high quality standards.





But to create a collection Le bal des roses Victoire de Castellane was inspired by the Parisian balls of the 50s, at which ladies shone in Dior's couture dresses. The collection includes 21 jewelry, here you can see large flower rings with a secret (rose petals open when you press the hidden lever).

Many collections of the work of Victoire de Castellan are limited in the number of items presented in them, and clients of the brand disassemble almost all jewelry in advance even before they appear on the public. There is even a "secret order" of jewelry collectors from Victoire de Castellane.




Christian Dior has always had an interest in astrology and often used the guidance of clairvoyant fortune-tellers. He said that it gave him the strength to act. Collection Rose céleste talks about this page of his life. In it you will see images of heavenly bodies - the Moon and the Sun. Among the products are rings, bracelets, graceful pendants-medallions, where the mother-of-pearl moon shines with white gold stars in onyx and the sun of yellow gold on mother-of-pearl.

Collection Rose des Vents... This remarkable collection began almost five years ago. Inspired by the eight-pointed wind rose, Christian Dior's mascot, Victoire de Castellane made it the main piece of jewelry in the collection. A diamond shines in the center of each wind rose.



This mosaic-shaped meteorological symbol can still be seen today at the bottom of the pool at Villa Les Rhumbs in Granville, where Christian Dior spent his childhood and youth.All the pieces in the Rose des Vents collection, inspired by Christian Dior's passion for divination, are embellished with a mother-of-pearl crescent, white gold stars against an onyx sky and a golden Sun with a sparkling diamond. All decorations are symbols of fate and good luck.



The famous couturier called himself a fashion designer who “followed the laws and principles of architecture,” which was reflected in the collections of Archi Dior and Dior a Versailles. “Christian Dior lined his dresses like an architect. I wanted my jewelry to be similar to these dresses. They seem to be created from fabrics folded into draperies and flounces, graceful pleats and frills. "

For several years now, the creative designer Dior Joaillerie has been drawing funny "comics" in which he conveys a variety of stories in his imaginary encounters with Christian Dior. She named this theme “Dior et Moi”. In the traditional form of the ring "toi et moi" moi ("you and me"), two large precious stones are fastened with a metal rim.

Without changing the jewelry plot, Victoire makes his own adjustments, combining various precious and semi-precious stones, where emerald and malachite, tourmaline and turquoise emphasize the beauty of each other ...



Victoire de Castellane destroys previously established traditions and presents rings with jewelry between the fingers, and bracelets, necklaces and earrings - in unconventional colors, shapes and proportions, uses a monochromatic and gradient lacquer coating in the most extraordinary shades, created by the jewelry masters of the fashion house. All these features, combined with brushed gold, expressively emphasize the beauty and radiance of each stone.

Victoire conducts a mental dialogue with the great couturier and pleases the world with his fantasy drawings, where two famous designers "toi et moi" - Dior and Victoire de Castellane exchange their ideas. She created the 2012 Dear Dior and 2013 Cher Dior collections. Both collections are represented by the highest jewelry art, like letters from Victoire to the founder of the French house, and instead of words - precious stones.

Dior's jewelers use exceptionally rare and unique stones to give Dior jewelery an incomparable shine. Victoire de Castellane creates each of his collections, as if proceeding from the ideas of Dior himself. Jewelry made of precious metals, stones and luxurious diamonds recall the pages of the famous designer's life.



Victoire de Castellane is engaged not only in jewelry and watches, but also in intricate jewelry sculpture. In the Gem Dior collection of 99 pieces, dedicated to the 20th anniversary of Victoire de Castellane's work as creative director of Dior Joaillerie, among the beautiful pieces adorned with multi-colored stones, there is a watch whose dial is hidden under a scattering of precious stones. Moving aside the emerald composition, you can see the dial surrounded by emeralds, sapphires, rubies, diamonds and even large tanzanite.

Recently, her book, The A to Z of Victoire de Castellane, was published in France, dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the creative activity of Victoire de Castellane. Here you can get acquainted with all the collections of jewelry that Victoire has invented for 20 years within the walls of the House of Dior.



Jewelry is exactly what serves a person for a long, long time, and sometimes his whole life, and can continue to serve further, but already to his descendants. Almost every woman, possessing an adornment, in her innermost thoughts thinks about who to give it to ...