Dior was established by the legendary designer Christian Dior in 1946. Dior revolutionized the couture fashion industry with his first ever collection known as “The New Look” which featured an exaggerated feminine silhouette with hourglass waistlines, full skirts and luxurious fabrics, a look that he continued to experiment with and redefine during his lifetime. The Dior name is synonymous with glamour and femininity and is the definition of Parisian haute couture. Dior himself believed in controlling every aspect of a fashionable woman’s look and thus created costume jewelry to ensure every woman was, as he called it, “top to toe”. Dior costume jewels were and are still made in non-precious materials such as gilt-metal and crystal and are often signed by the designer of record and hallmarked with the country of manufacture, most often France or Germany.
Dior launched their first ever fine jewelry line in 1998 and Victoire de Castellane was appointed Dior Fine Jewelry Creator, a position she has held ever since. Prior to Dior, de Castellane worked as an assistant to Karl Lagerfeld at Chanel. She spent nearly fourteen years with Chanel designing their popular costume jewelry and for the past twenty-five years, she has created collections for Dior of both Fine and High Jewelry, combining colorful precious and semi-precious materials to bring her distinctive and daring imagination to life. She has been quoted as saying. “I start with a story, a world, never with the material. I find my stories in everything I see and experience – rebellion, love, sexuality, pleasure, violence, protection, psychoanalysis and my taste for fairy tales…”
Her pieces are bold, fantastical, wildly original and conjure the spirit of Christian Dior through her fascination with landscape and flowers, animalia and the natural and supernatural worlds.
