October 24, 2011 |
FROM THE VAULT (SUMMER 2011)
Victoire de Castellane – The Fantasist
The problem with gold is that it only exists in three colours. How on earth is anyone supposed to work with that. Yes you can use silver, but it’s not the same, and only expands the colour gamut to four. Hardly enough if you’re thing is some Fantasia style colour explosion. Which explains Victoire de Castellane’s love of lacquering. Because Victoire you see is all about colour and how else do you put colour into haute joaillerie? Sometimes you just have to break the rules.
The first piece she ever designed was a pair of earrings. They were made from a gold charm bracelet her mother had given her. She was five. The way she tells the story, it seems like the most natural and logical thing in the world. “I guess by this time I had fallen in love with jewellery and couldn’t imagine wearing anything I didn’t make myself.” She traces her ‘love affair’ back to a plastic snake necklace, complete with oversized green stone her father sent her. To her, it was the most exotic thing she’d ever seen.
Victoire’s pieces are like Disney on acid. She starts “with a story, a world, never with the material. I find my stories in everything I observe and experience – rebellion, love, sexuality, pleasure, violence, protection, psychoanalysis, and my taste for fairy tales…” which then results in something along the lines of a fist sized bud that opens in the manner of a Venus fly trap from which emerges a fantastical fairytale scene of lady birds and lilies, each part so exquisitely crafted you’d be forgiven for thinking that she dipped a real ladybird in gold then had it enamelled to achieve the desired effect. Each piece is a miniature work of art. So much so she recently held an exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery in Paris called Fleurs d’exces. Technicolour rings were placed in vases appearing flower like. “The idea is to live jewellery.” If you can’t wear it doesn’t mean you can’t show it off. There are some things that simply put demand the attention bestowed upon them. Victoire’s creations are those things. Locking them up would be akin to pouring weed killer on a rose bush. They need a spot light to live.
by Natalie Dembinska
Photograph by Pierre Even – www.sorepresent.com
