“I have the most tender and surprising memories of my childhood home. I would even say that I owe my whole life and my style to its place and its architecture ”.
For Christian Dior, the Les Rhumbs villa in Granville, Normandy, where he spent his early childhood, was an inspiring place. Today it houses the Christian Dior Museum, which opens every year from May to October with a different temporary exhibition.
About the museum
Les Rhumbs is a charming Belle Epoque mansion on the cliffs of Granville overlooking the sea towards the Channel Islands. It was built by a shipowner who named his new home Rhumb. A ‘heading’ is an imaginary line on the earth’s surface used as the standard way to plot the heading of a ship on a chart. You come across the heading symbol all over the house that you will probably recognize on old maps.
Christian Dior’s parents bought the house in 1905 and, although they moved to Paris when Dior was five years old, the family continued to use it during holidays and weekends. In 1925, Christian Dior created a pergola with a reflecting pool to create an outdoor living space in the English landscaped park that his mother Madeleine had designed. He then added a rose garden, sheltered from the salty destructive winds alongside a wall along the sentier des douaniers (the path used by customs officials looking for smugglers).
Today the garden is a fragrance garden celebrating the famous Christian Dior perfumes. In 1932, Madeleine died and her father, ruined by the financial crisis of the early 1930s and the subsequent Depression, was forced to sell the house. It was bought by the city of Granville and the grounds and the house was opened to the public.
From June to September, the museum offers perfume workshops for groups of up to 10 people, teaching you how to distinguish different scents, how they are extracted and developed. Then learn what the main ingredients are in a Christian Dior perfume, how the perfume has evolved, and all about the different olfactory families, from floral to leather. Workshops are held on Wednesday afternoons at 3 pm, 4 pm and 5 pm.
There is also a tea room set in the garden where you sip tea from English porcelain mugs in a beautiful setting of 20th century style furniture. You can visit the tea room and it is open in July and August from noon to 6.30 pm
Practical information
The Rhumbs
Rue d’Estouteville
50400 Granville
Normandia
Phone: 00 33 (0) 2 33 61 48 21
Web sitio
Open House and Exhibitions:
Winter: Wednesday-Sunday 2-5.30pm
Summer: Daily 10.30am-6pm
Admission: Adult 4 euros, students 4 euros, children under 12 free.
Christian Dior Garden: Nov-Feb 8 am-5pm
Tue, Oct 9 am-6pm
April, May, Sep
9 am- 8pm Jun-Aug 9 am-9pm
Free entrance
The life of Christian Dior
Born into a wealthy family, the young man was able to pursue his artistic bent instead of entering the diplomatic service, which is what his family had wanted. When he left school, his father bought him a small art gallery where, with his friend Jacques Bonjean, he sold works by artists that included Utrillo, Braque, Leger, Dali, Zadkine, and Picasso.
When his mother died and his father lost his business, the young Christian closed the gallery and went to work for fashion designer Robert Piguet before military service in 1940. On his discharge in 1942 he worked for couturier Lucien Long with Pierre Balmain , and along with Jeanne Lanvin and Nina Ricci, they dressed the wives of Nazi officers and French collaborators, the only people capable of keeping the industry going. Her younger sister Catherine was called Miss Dior: she had worked with the French Resistance, was captured and imprisoned in the Ravensbrück concentration camp, survived, and was released in 1945.
In 1946 the Christian Dior house was founded at 30 Avenue Montaigne in Paris, backed by Marcel Boussac, a French textile millionaire. Dior showed its first collection the following year when two lines, called Corolle and Huit, took the world by storm. This was the ‘New Look’, a phrase coined by the editor of the American magazine Harper’s Bazaar , Carmel Snow, and the name Christian Dior became synonymous with post-war Paris and its meteoric progress to become the city of fashion. most important in the world.
In 1948, Dior moved to ready-to-wear with a new store at the corner of 5th Avenue and 57th Street in New York and launched its Miss Dior fragrance. He was the first to license the production of his designs, creating accessories such as stockings, ties and perfumes that were manufactured and distributed throughout the world.
In 1954, Yves Saint Laurent joined the house and when Christian Dior suffered a fatal heart attack on October 25, 1957, he took over. Dior’s funeral was as glamorous as his life, with 2,500 people in attendance, led by clients like the Duchess of Windsor.
Christian Dior’s fashion house
After Yves Saint Laurent left in 1962, Marc Bohan took over, creating the Slim Look that took the iconic Dior shape but swapped it for a slimmer, less voluptuous look that suited the new era of the ’60s.
In 1978, the Boussac group went bankrupt and sold all assets, including Dior, to the Willot Group, which in turn went bankrupt and sold the label to Bernard Arnault of the luxury goods brand LVMH for ‘a token franc’.
Gianfranco Ferre took over as Christian Dior’s stylistic director in 1989, then in 1997 he stepped down from the British maverick designer John Galliano. As Arnault said at the time: “Galliano has a creative talent very close to that of Christian Dior. It has the same extraordinary blend of romanticism, feminism and modernity that Monsieur Dior symbolized. In all his creations: his suits, his dresses – There are similarities with the Dior style «.
In March 2011, Galliano was fired for his attack on a member of the public and anti-Semitic comments while drunk in a Paris bar. His former design director, Bill Gaytten, held office until April 2012, when Raf Simons was appointed.
Christian Dior’s story is one of ups and downs, of great drama and great richness, just like the glamorous stars that dress the eternally popular house.
The Christian Dior Museum makes for a nice day if you stay nearby by the D-Day landing beaches. It is also a good link to a tour of medieval Normandy and the William the Conqueror trail.
- Take a look at the other costume, textile, perfume and fashion museums in France.
More on William the Conqueror and Normandy
- William the conqueror in pictures
- Castle of William the Conqueror
