TAormina, Sicily. The sun sets over tawny and pink clouds. Mount Etna, which woke up a few days earlier, lays a tear of fire on the vast panorama while the models sport, in the terraced gardens of the Grand Hotel Timeo erected on a cliff in front of the Mediterranean, the joyful and colorful rooms from the new Dior high jewelry collection designed by Victoire de Castellane. In a word addressed to each of the guests, Pietro Beccari, CEO of the house, set the tone. “I hope that this experience will be an opportunity for you to discover more about the unique world of Dior. Because this is indeed an experience where each gesture, each attention (and they are numerous and constantly renewed), whether in the finish of the details or the harmony of the whole, conceals a delicacy of all the more moving as it is expressed with a quality of execution worthy of a long-rehearsed and skilfully mastered ballet. It is also a complete universe in which guests will appreciate during their stay between the sea and the hills the refinement of the tableware, the elegance of the 40 haute couture dresses specially created by Maria Grazia Chiuri for the occasion and the efficiency cosmetics.
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When the ribbons wave, the print must follow.
That evening, the twilight resting on the bougainvillea sets the 137 models in the Dior Print collection on fire, the guiding thread of which is print. Prints of checks, stripes, tie & dye gradients, Liberty developing interlacing ribbons constituting chokers, chokers and breastplates, depicting adornment flowers resuscitated in rings, earrings at the edges cut clean by an imaginary scissor cut. The whole makes up a prismatic charivari that houses technical prowess that is all the more graceful for being discreet – chic oblige – since it is necessary to enshrine in three-dimensional creations the liveliness of a motif that has only of them.
“When the ribbons wave, the print must follow”, insists Victoire de Castellane. “In the same way as in sewing, it is a work of adjustment. It is all the more precise as the curved surfaces of the frames distort the prints and the lines. This Parisian know-how illuminates stones intended to arouse the desire of customers and the interest of collectors: an extraordinary sapphire from Madagascar weighing 12.07 carats crowns a ribbon necklace, a sapphire from Ceylon weighing nearly 6 carats illuminates a ring double, an 8.02-carat lilac sapphire from Madagascar forms the pistil of a necklace, an 11.92-carat Colombian emerald velvety soft green a necklace whose metal is worked like fabric.
Further on, a 14.66-carat Burmese sapphire and a Mozambique ruby light a flame in the eyes. True to her signature, the artistic director allows herself the spiciness already sketched out at the heart of the Gem Dior collection of a “crazy throw of stones” where diamonds of all sizes order random figures standing out on cuffs and asymmetrical necklaces. . Make no mistake about it: this artistically casual gesture is the setting for exceptional gems, in particular two D Flawless white diamonds (the highest quality for a white diamond, the rarest too): a pear-shaped diamond of 11.58 carats and a cushion-cut diamond of 10.05 carats. While granting itself complete creative freedom, the house shows an increasingly marked predilection for stones of this caliber, which proves the extent of its commitment and the vigor of its ambition.