After the success of Christian Dior, a visionary designer, the Christian Dior Museum in Granville inaugurates a new exhibition celebrating unconditional love for nature cultivated by Mr Dior. A solar odyssey, entitled Dior, enchanting gardens, highlights this fascination that is more than ever at the heart of the House's history and identity.
Its origins begin here, in Granville, in the park surrounding Villa Les Rhumbs, which has since become the emblematic museum hosting this retrospective. In the middle of the pine trees overlooking the sea, Christian Dior develops his taste for the splendors of the plant world. « Having inherited the passion for flowers from my mother, I liked mostly the company of plants and gardeners. », he wrote later, reminding himself of this initiatory place where the soul of a gardener was already growing, before that of the designer-perfumer.
As early as 1947, for his first parade, the iconic New Look, he imagined the Corolle line, whose cut of dresses suggests a reversed flower in a petal deployment. An Ariane thread that spreads from one model to another, giving life to wonderful « women-flowers ». That same year, Christian Dior sketched – with the help of his friend Paul Vacher – the olfactory portrait of a dream garden through the enchanting bouquet of Miss Dior, a sensual floral chypre, symbol of modern femininity.
In 1948, Christian Dior acquired a former mill in Milly-la-Forêt, a few tens of kilometers from Paris. If this lush setting is « hermitage necessary for her rest »It was in Montauroux that he later found the refuge in which to withdraw. Set under the sun of the Var hinterland, the Château de la Colle Noire becomes the ideal setting for the practice of botany art. On the fifty hectares that surround the majestic Provençal residence, he planted fields of jasmine, roses of May and lavender.
As the seasons change, the designer will have to stop picking his inspirations in the rich and fertile nature of his various Edens. During the visit, valuable archival documents are revealed, talking with haute couture silhouettes alongside the House's essential wakes. Thus, the elegant and delicate bouquet of Diorama, combining the fresh flowers with the ylang-ylang, the fleeting and sweet intensity of the muguet which makes the singularity of Diorissimo, or the seaside spirit of Cologne Fresh Water, the personal perfume of the designer, alternately express this founding passion.
At the same time, the journey traces how Christian Dior's successors are captured. Maria Grazia Chiuri, Artistic Director of Women's Lines; Francis Kurkdjian, the Director of Perfume Creation, but also Stephen Jones, the chapelier of Dior; Victory of Castellane, artistic director of Dior Jewellery; Cordelia de Castellane, the Artistic Director of Baby Dior and Dior Maison, or Peter Philips, the Director of the Creation and Image of Makeup, all reinterpret and sublimate the poetic beauty of Christian Dior's heart gardens, radiating this seam that infuses the creative daring of the House.
Published on the occasion of this tribute exhibition, presented from 12 April to 2 November 2025 at the Christian Dior Museum in Granville, the book Dior. Enchanting gardens1 (Rizzoli editions) allows you to explore even more this captivating and inexhaustible theme.