For their fourth participation in the Biennale des Antiquaire in Paris, Dior Jewelry is unveiling their new fine jewelry collection: Archi Dior, designed by Victoire de Castellane. This designer who got her start at Chanel alongside Karl Lagerfeld is exploring a new vocabulary at Dior Jewelry through the collection’s 44 pieces, that of Architecture. She confides that she found her inspiration in the pages of sketch books that belonged to Christian Dior, who, before becoming a couturier, dreamed of being an architect. This inclination can be found in the master’s creations, where dresses and suits conceived as edifices of rigorously structured fabric come one after the other. How could you but think of the pure and crisp lines of the New Look?
Earrings, necklaces, bracelets, and rings borrow their names from Dior’s iconic lines and dresses, adapting to the delicate movement of tissues spoken through the language of jewelry. “Certain pieces imitate the movement of the bottom of a dress that lifts up to the rhythm of a woman’s steps,” Victoire de Castellane explains. “These are jewels that pass by like ball gowns.” There’s a delicate pair of diamond earrings, a shining echo of the Junon dress presented by Christian Dior during the Fall/Winter 1949-1950 runway, and who’s skirt is composed of superimposed petals of tissue. Another example is the Corolle line – the inaugural runway of Christian Dior’s career in 1949 – where the jewelry appears to be spirals of diamonds and emeralds, with a superposition of pink skirts, or the Bar ring and cuff bracelet – an homage to the famed geometric suit.
Leaving behind the organic vocabulary that was familiar to her, the designer develops, through the Archi Dior collection, more abstract propositions with architectural lines that on more than one occasion operate as a mutation from organic to mineral, from Haute Couture to fine jewelry.
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