Christian Dior's isolation diaries, by Victoire de Castellane

As the pace of our days has shifted, so we revert to simpler pleasures, and baking, keeping fit and indulging hobbies are imbued with a new significance. At home, Dior’s (opens in new tab) artistic director Victoire de Castellane’s thoughts, too, are firmly on the domestic, and in these series of sketches she imagines how she would have passed these surreal days with Christian Dior. The Rose des Vents sketches, like the jewellery collection of the same name, take inspiration from Dior’s favourite leitmotifs.

‘I wondered what Christian Dior and I would have done during this unprecedented period of confinement and of course over the Easter weekend,’ she muses. Her felt tip pen series concocts the ways they fill the days: ‘I imagined us doing exercise, cooking and of course going on an Easter egg hunt. Christian Dior was not a great sportsman so I pictured us exercising in the salon of 30 Avenue Montaigne, him remaining in a suit and tie. And since he was known for being a gourmet, just like myself, I saw us in the kitchen, baking cake.’

Christian Dior would no doubt have approved: ‘The materials used in the kitchen are just as noble as those in couture, and in my profession I like how the realisation of the work is associated with the involvement of the hands and mind,’ he once remarked.

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