Diorissima! In Venice, Victoire de Castellane’s New High Jewelry Collection Doubles Down on Color and Collage

Reported by Vogue.

Venice doesn't do subtlety, and neither does Victoire de Castellane. This month, Dior's high jewelry creative director staged Diorissima — her latest collection — inside the Palazzo del Casinò, the Art Deco monument that looms over the Adriatic, and the setting was, predictably, immaculate. Cordelia de Castellane's tablescapes featured Murano glass daffodils and playing card motifs pressed into gilded porcelain. A torch singer worked the retro lounge upstairs. The sun set on cue. Even the guests, many of them head-to-toe Dior, seemed art-directed.

The evening had history behind it, according to Vogue. Christian Dior himself described a legendary 1950s Venetian ball — conceived with Salvador Dalí at the Palazzo Labia — as "the most marvelous spectacle I have ever seen, or hope to see." Seventy-something years later, the maison is still making that case. The Diorissima event doubled as a fundraiser for the restoration of Ca' d'Oro, a Gothic palace that defines Venetian architecture, and the Biennale's opening provided the cultural backdrop. The city has never been merely a location for Dior — it's an ongoing collaboration.

The Jewelry Is the Argument

After a dinner by Michelin-starred chef Mauro Colagreco, Castellane revealed her hand: 112 pieces moving through a custom-built gaming hall outfitted with working poker, blackjack, roulette, and craps tables. The 20 couture looks framing them were made by Jonathan Anderson — sculptural bustier dresses and ecru silk crepe gowns that functioned more as neutral ground than statement. The jewelry was the statement. A wisteria necklace set with 4,100 diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and spinels. Voie Lactée, a fringe necklace radiating over 3,000 diamonds from a 7.03-carat cushion-cut solitaire. A coral reef motif trimmed in ultrafine white gold lacquered in tropical blues. Each piece a controlled explosion of color.

What distinguishes this collection from spectacle-for-spectacle's-sake is Castellane's insistence on treating gemstones like paint. A nearly six-carat pink oval sapphire from Madagascar. A more than 10-carat royal blue sapphire from Myanmar. Both handled in a painterly, almost collage-like manner — layered against mother-of-pearl and ornamental stones, pushed further by her now-signature lacquer technique. She also extended the doublet method from last year's Diorexquis collection, stacking chrysoprase, aventurine, turquoise, chalcedony, and opal into clover leaves crowned with 178 pear-cut diamonds for the Lucky Flowers necklace. It's jewelry that references Matisse, Man Ray, and Picasso — artists Monsieur Dior revered — while belonging entirely to Castellane's own aesthetic vocabulary, one she also exercises as a practicing artist in her studio on the Avenue Montaigne.

Even the styling pushed back against convention: brooches worn as hairclips, or placed low on a bare back like a deliberate afterthought. After the show, clients and press crowded the jewel cases before drifting toward the game tables and staying until nearly morning. When a collection is this confident, nobody wants to leave early.

Castellane has spent decades proving that high jewelry can be genuinely artistic — Diorissima is her most persuasive argument yet.

Read the original at Vogue.