There’s a certain magic in the way Dior revisits its own codes – never quite the same as before, always with a whisper of reinvention. The house’s My Dior collection has just expanded, and it’s nothing short of a love letter to the iconic cannage motif. That delicate cross-hatched pattern, first etched into Napoleon III chairs for Christian Dior’s couture shows in 1947, has been reimagined once again by Victoire de Castellane, artistic director of Dior Joaillerie, with a kind of unstudied bravado that makes the familiar feel new.
Cannage is more than a decorative flourish – it’s Dior’s shorthand for elegance, for history, for the enduring spell of 30, Avenue Montaigne. Castellane has made it her own signature, weaving those architectural lines into jewellery that feels both fragile and unshakable. With My Dior, the motif is recast as braided gold, worked by hand in a process so meticulous it borders on the obsessive. Each tiny element is affixed one by one, until the result looks almost impossibly seamless.
This season, the collection swells with eleven fresh arrivals, and they are not shy pieces. Picture a diamond-paved choker that sits close to the throat like a gilded secret. A double ring that binds two fingers together, less an accessory than an assertion. A sculptural cuff with the heft of an heirloom, and bracelets that catch the light with an almost conspiratorial glimmer. There’s even a single earring – white or yellow gold – worn alone, as if to punctuate an outfit with a wink.
The surprise lies in the details. A ribbon of polished gold slips beneath the cannage mesh like a mirror, creating a flash of reflection, a shimmer beneath the lattice. Yellow and white gold play against diamonds and turquoise lacquer, a striking chromatic turn that feels both retro and futuristic. It’s couture thinking transposed into jewellery: the same eye for fabric and fold, but translated into metal and stone.
To wear My Dior is to wear Dior’s history in miniature form – the grandeur of the catwalk, distilled into something that fits around your wrist or collarbone. Castellane’s talent is in balancing reverence with audacity, never letting the collection slip into nostalgia. Instead, she writes the next chapter of a story that began with chairs in a salon nearly eighty years ago. An ode, yes, but also a challenge: Dior, always, as you’ve never seen it before.
Photography by Brigitte Niedermair.
