Victoire is one of those women, who I admire the most. I’m in love with her work but more with her personality. After all this years work for her is still something that brings excitement and joy. She designed her first piece of jewellery at age of five – she simple reworked earrings that she get from her mother. Victoire de Castellane was born into a strong lineage of French aristocracy. Her style inspiration is coming from her uncle Gilles Dufour one of Karl Lagerfeld’s assistants at both Fendi and Chanel and her paternal grandmother, Sylvia Hennessy, who had an eye for luxurious accessories. de Castellane like Chanel has revolutionized the way of thinking about jewellery. For fourteen years she worked as a designer in Chanel, combining their projects, precious and semi-precious stones with colorful emalie.
In 1998 she joined Dior as the first Creative Director of their new jewelry department and her jewelry collections brought to mind the most beautiful fairy jewels. Work at Dior is like a playground for her, like she said in one of her interview : Work at Dior is like a playground for her, like she said in one of her interview : “At Dior I have a possibility to do those think I’ve always wanted. When I have started designing huge cocktail rings, people thought I got crazy. But thanks to that, women in my jewelry can play like a little girls.”
In her designs she uses materials like no one before, choosing precious stones for their unorthodox beauty and form. She prefers them rough or free-shaped, as they occur in nature, in direct contrast to the highly wrought settings that she devises for them. Hard stones like jasper, rhyolite, agate, and petrified wood are cunningly sculpted into solid bases, hollow containers, or lidded boxes; with their striking natural patterns or sheer brute strangeness, each underscores and intensifies the visual effects.
pictures from: fashionmag.us, lastdollstanding.blogspot.co.at, trouvaillesdujour.blogspot.co.at, lafillementhealeau.com, fashionsmostwanted.blogspot.co.at, gofeminin.de, silviataveira.com, lionesswomansclub.com
from: www.gagosian.com