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THE FINER DETAILS

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COURTESY DIOR JOILLARIE

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Victoire de Castellane’s bold statementjewellery isn’t for the faint-hearted; it takes a strong personality, a defined approach to style, and an eye for proportion to really carry it off By Alexandra Shakespeare

etting dressed every morning is easy for a woman who knows exactly who she is. Just look at Dita von Teese. Pencil skirt, cinch-waisting belt or bustier, towering 50s-style Louboutins and a bold slick of red lipstick – done. I would hazard a bet that Dita rarely seeks positive affirmations or catches sneaky peeks at her reflection, because after years of crafting her burlesque look, she knows it works. Victoire de Castellane, Dior Joillarie’s creative director (and a friend of Dita’s) is another such sartorially empowered woman. Her signature look – straight fringe, black clothes and eccentric oversized jewellery – is not only central to her identity as both a woman and a designer, it’s enviable. And she never deviates from it. “I know my style,” she explains. “If I don’t find something like it this season, I will wait.”

Today, on a fresh spring day during Paris Fashion Week at the

Dior HQ on Avenue Montaigne, Victoire is in her colourful office preparing for the opening night of her fine jewellery exhibition at Le Bon Marche. As ever, she stays true to her signature style, wearing high Miu Miu platform shoes, a black Alaïa circle-skirt dress, pinched in at the waist with a black vintage belt, and opaques of the thickest possible denier – perfect for outlining her gloriously long legs. The look is completed with a bright complexion clear of make-up, brown hair as poker straight as it was when she first had it cut in at the age of four and, most importantly, her jewellery.

As playfully prominent as you’d expect from a designer that’s transformed the once-floundering Dior fine jewellery brand, her black ensemble sets off her large opal ring as if it’s on fire. Fast forward to the evening’s exhibition and Victoire is wearing exactly the same outfit with just a shoe and jewellery change – yet she looks as chic by night among Paris’s most discerning fashion crowd as she did by day working in her Dior office. Well, if it works why change it?

“I’m always wearing dresses,” Victoire explains, when I ask her to sum up the secret to her signature style. “I can tell you I am lazy and in the morning I don’t want to have to figure out which top 91

THE FINER DETAILS

Enamelled gold, diamond and ruby pendant, price on request

Ruby and spinel ring, price on request

Launch of Belladonne Island, Musée D’Orsay

At Le Bon Marché

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Victoire de Castellane at the age of five

At Le Bon Marché

Victoire de Castellane in her studio

Ring, price on application

At Le Bon Marché

PHOTOGRAPHS: COURTESY DIOR JOILLARIE, ALEXANDRA SHAKESPEARE

With Christian Louboutin

forget the value of the stones and metal

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Brooch that transforms into a bracelet or earrings, launched on Second Life

goes with which skirt. With a dress, it is done.” Who’d have thought don’t need me for that. That’s why I did the huge rings and style savvy was so practical? “I love shoes, too. They are a very the coloured stones. And I always remember what Karl used to say: important accessory. Shoes determine your proportions. Like ‘Never compare, never compete’. He also reminded me, ‘Don’t jewellery. When you’re wearing jewellery you have to see a full- do things like others.’ length picture. It’s all in the proportions.”

Subverting precious gems is Victoire’s way of doing what has And it’s true: her oversized blazing opal ring does seem to perfectly never been done before. Few else would dare to mix precious balance out her patent peep-toe platforms. Clever. “What I really sapphires and diamonds with onyx and coral or dip gold into green like is to have a big piece or one small piece of jewellery, but not to enamel. “Working with jewellery that is expensive, I have to forget wear together,” she elaborates. “I like one ‘wow’ piece at a time.” the value of the stones and metal. It’s only the colour and material Gazing like a child in a sweetshop at the tempting glass displays that matters. I have to feel like I am playing.” in the petite Dior jewellery boutique, it becomes clear that the same The current haute jewellery collection Belladonne Island, which theme of proportion – so consistent in Victoire’s own personal style hits Dubai’s Dior store this July, retains this childlike perspective.

– also dominates her jewellery designs. Two of the most popular The 17-piece collection of opals, rubies, garnets and tourmalines lines jump out because of the sheer contrast in was first launched as a teaser back in January, style: the haute couture Dior Joillarie (“big, in the online fantasy world of Second Life, comic book-style jewellery”), made of the most and then in Paris’s newly restored Musée de extravagant and unexpected precious gems; and l’Orangerie, the permanent home to Monet’s Mimioui (miniature, subtle, light pieces huge, mesmerising Water Lilies paintings. described as “the lingerie of bijouterie”). Both The poisonous-flower- and insect-inspired offer the solution to Victoire’s “either very big designs include a choker made of 100 carats or very small” style diktat. of diamonds and 50 carats of rubies. And, just And while trends may change twice a year, as the pieces have transformed from online Victoire stays uncompromisingly true to her imaginings into reality, a metamorphosis style, which is largely based on her childhood takes place when wearing them too: the inspirations, only presenting the new haute choker breaks down into earrings and a jewellery pieces every two years. The last brooch, while a flower ring opens up to reveal collection was inspired by a secret garden of a big central ruby-like spinel. A bracelet even flowers and wildlife. As if designed by a child, bears a message hidden beneath the petals: rings were adorned with playful ladybird or “Trouver l’amour, le conquerir et le garder pour petal designs that took on an exaggerated toujours” (Find love, conquer it and keep it With Dita Von fairytale form. forever). It’s a heartfelt message adorning Teese (left) and Olympia “When I was growing up, I was surrounded a collection designed with real passion.

Le Tan (centre) by ladies who wore huge, amazing pieces of “I feel most creative now. I am completely jewellery. Now when I see them happy because I am really in “I have to they seem conservative and not so my element. I do my work, big. That’s why I always create I control, I am responsible. I use . with the eyes of a four-year-old: all the jewels I want. My private for the scale. It was a passion when life is on track. I am happy.

I have to feel like I am playing” I was four; I knew it was something I have a balance in work and completely in me.” home. I know what I don’t want and what I do want. Family Aged five, Victoire made her very first piece of jewellery. “I broke gives you the balance.” up a precious bracelet that my mother gave me and pieced it back And the courage to be brave in your ideas and sure of who you together differently. I knew I was in trouble, but for me it had no are? “My confidence for being different comes from my family. My value. When I was 12, I asked someone to melt my religious medals father Antoine is like this: he doesn’t care, he just wants to be happy. to make a ring.”

Maybe it’s the aristocratic spirit. It allows us more freedom and an Her exposure to such grand fashions – and grand ideas – as a open mind. We prefer to die than conform.” child comes down to Victoire’s impressive aristocratic lineage. The Now Victoire has a host of like-minded individuals and celebrities Edwardian dandy Boni de Castellane, who built the Palais Rose, wearing her haute and bespoke pieces, including Claudia Schiffer was her great uncle (“who I think I am most like”), while her (godmother to her daughter Zoa) who “loves the skullette ring”. grandmother was Cognac heir Sylvia Hennessy, best friend of And Dior’s fine jewellery is more popular then ever (selling, since Barbara Hutton. Now married to Thomas Lenthal, the creative 2004, around 35 per cent more than before). So which is Victoire’s director of Numéro magazine, Victoire is also the niece of former favourite piece from the collection?

Balmain designer Gilles Darfour, and was muse and model to Karl “I can’t say: it is like asking to choose between my children.

Lagerfeld throughout her 14-year stint designing costume jewellery My mother always says, ‘of course you love your children, but for Chanel. It was when she took over the helm at Dior Fine all for different reasons.’ It’s the same with my children and my Jewellery in 1998 that she found the freedom to create as she does jewellery.” But if she were stuck on Belladonne Island, which today, literally setting out to “break the conservative mould”. piece would she choose? “I would want to take a big ring with “I don’t like conservative things. It exists but they [Dior] an opal in it, and that’s all! Voila.” N 93