Monkeys, music, modern art, marble: stepping into the high-ceilinged entrance hall of Cordelia de Castellane’s Paris apartment, one is accosted by all four. The oblong vestibule is lined in a fanciful fabric of de Castellane’s design, based on the 18th-century French craze for singerie, decorative motifs depicting anthropomorphic monkeys. Hers are playing musical instruments, hanging from a cannage frame, and facing off with a large oil painting by the contemporary artist Aaron Young. In the room’s center, atop an Ikea jute rug, a breche violette marble ’50s Maison Jansen table has been laid for dinner. There isn’t a coatrack in sight.
It’s typical of de Castellane, 42, the vivacious artistic director of Baby Dior and Dior Maison, to have ambushed visitors expecting another well-appointed 18th-century Left Bank apartment with something a little wilder. Her homes are known for their vividly hued schemes that blend her own designs with heirlooms pilfered from her urbane family, a lively selection of furniture, books, and textiles she herself has amassed over 20 years, and the odd piece of contemporary art that lends everything a punky twist. She insists there is no method behind the mélange. “I don’t like to plan things, not in my life, not in my work,” she says, curling up on a giant cherry-red sofa that once belonged to her grandparents. “I work a lot by feeling. And I don’t like a total look.”
It helps that de Castellane’s heritage is steeped in aristocratic glamour. Among her relatives are Emilio Terry, the architect and interior designer who counted Salvador Dalí and Jean-Michel Frank as friends, and Victoire de Castellane, the larger-than-life jewelry designer at Dior. Her Greek mother, Atalanta, is an interior designer and the best friend of Gilles Dufour, former right-hand man to Karl Lagerfeld, who secured Cordelia an internship at Chanel at 15. A year later, she left school for a placement at Emanuel Ungaro, where she progressed from picking up pins from the couture atelier floor to a role as a public relations executive. After nine years, she left to launch her own childrenswear company, C de C. Soon enough, in 2012, Dior came calling.
She feels a special kinship with Monsieur Dior, whom she talks about affectionately, almost as though he were still alive. “He’s kind of my best friend at Dior,” she says. The couturier remains her touchstone when embarking on designs for the five collections of childrenswear she turns out a year, alongside homeware and in addition to curating the gala dinners the brand regularly hosts in Venice. Like the founder, she is obsessed with gardening: her apartment is filled with cut flowers from her country estate in L’Oise, north of Paris. “Flowers bring me a lot of inspiration—it’s about the palette, the temporality, how much beauty can bring you joy in a very short space of time,” she says. De Castellane also appreciates Dior’s sensitivity.“We are both Aquarius and both very superstitious.” Those monkeys in her hallway are not there by chance: Monsieur Dior frequently used them in his work, believing they brought good luck. “And I’m Greek,” says de Castellane, in wry solidarity, gesturing at the many charm bracelets that crowd her wrists.
Her Paris home appears to conform to Dior’s decorating maxims too. In his memoirs, the couturier observed: “To an impeccably decorated interior, I will always prefer one that’s more sensitive and spirited, which has gradually developed over time according to the existence and whims of its inhabitant.” There’s one snag. Despite the impeccably layered scene, de Castellane only moved into the apartment a month prior to Vogue’s visit. Still, it turns out she’s big on whim. Having lived in a rambling three-storey duplex in the same neighborhood since 2006, last summer she had the sudden urge to move and spent four months looking for a new place. This one was listed online one morning, she saw it the same day at 12 noon and an hour later her offer had been accepted. “I felt it had a very good vibration—I didn’t really look at the [floor] plan, it was more the feeling,” she says.
When we meet in late September 2022, the light filters into the two living room salons through lace Austrian curtains de Castellane inherited from her grandmother, illuminating a gutsy mix of antique and modern pieces. An L-shaped vintage sofa, covered in cream bouclé wool, is anchored by a leopard-print rug; a mirror sculpture by Garouste and Bonetti, an 18th birthday gift from her parents, hangs between the windows, opposite two giant chinoiserie-style doors she bought from an old chateau.
The main bedroom is equally bohemian, though a little softer. Lined in a striped floral fabric of her own design, edited by Maison Thevenon, the antique heirloom bed, with its green velvet curlicued headboard, is toned down by two ceramic India Mahdavi stools used as bedside tables. This leads onto a cocooning floral-wrapped bathroom, hung with folding fans de Castellane designed for past Dior events and laid with antique Belgian tiles, and a cerulean-blue dressing room decorated in Schumacher wallpaper. A Bearbrick statue, customized by Karl Lagerfeld in a Chanel suit, stands sentry on the dressing table, guarding de Castellane’s collection of vintage Chanel and Emanuel Ungaro, as well as more recently acquired printed pieces by Dior and jewelry by her cousin, Victoire.
You might imagine, from the sumptuous dining set-up in the hall, not to mention her vast collection of Murano glasses and vintage Dior Maison tableware accumulated from regular scourings of the Paris flea markets (“I just bought back some beautiful green malachite cutlery that belonged to Mr Dior!”), that de Castellane is a regular hostess. She admits she is in her pajamas by 7.30 p.m. most evenings. “I don’t go out—once in a blue moon, when I have to,” she says, conceding that she occasionally takes a table at Le Voltaire.
Instead, her favorite evening spot is a vast rattan table she requisitioned from the L’Oise house and installed between her two living rooms. She can spend entire evenings here drawing designs for new prints based on flowers she displays, specimen-like, in volumetric flasks held in an old metal laboratory stand, a gift from a friend. “To be surrounded by beauty, it’s amazing,” she says. “At night, I dream in front of the windows.”