Dior
Maison de Parfums
Monsieur Dior in the garden
As soon as Christian Dior arrived at the Château de La Colle Noire, he liked to get changed to go and see the gardening and picking teams on the domain. In the summer he would wear a large navy blue shirt with cotton trousers or shorts and a straw hat. The rest of the year, he would wear a velvet suit. Previously, in 1945, Christian Dior had participated in harvests on his sister’s property in Callian. At the Château de La Colle Noire he would spend 2 or 3 hours a day with his employees at harvest time.
The strawberry plants
On a 25m2 plot of land, one of the domain’s gardeners cultivated Moutot strawberries especially for Christian Dior, who particularly liked their large and fragrant fruit. He could never resist tasting them on the spot when he visited his domain.
In the kitchen
Every morning, Christian Dior would spend time in the Château de La Colle Noire kitchen with his chef Georges Huilier, and would choose the lunch and dinner menus when he had guests. He often liked to visit the kitchen to taste something, eat a petit four, and see how the meal preparations were coming along.
The Château de La Colle Noire cake
Monsieur Grosselin was the former owner of the Château de La Colle Noire and became the steward of the domain during Monsieur Dior’s time. His wife baked the “Château de La Colle Noire cake,” which Monsieur Dior adored (the secret recipe was based on sponge fingers, marzipan and rum).
Roses
At the Château de La Colle Noire, both fragrance roses and decorative roses were cultivated. They could be seen in the bedrooms as well as on the tables at mealtimes, and were even given to guests upon their departure. One of Monsieur Dior’s team was responsible solely for these bouquets.
In the name of CD
Tableware and house linens as well as harvest crates and the grape press were all monogrammed with the initials CD.
The vineyards
Each year, on the Château de La Colle Noire domain, Monsieur Dior produced around 1,000 litres of wine.
Catherine
Catherine Dior knew the Grosselin family (the previous owners of the Château de La Colle Noire) well. She was therefore the one who informed her brother in 1951 that the château was for sale. “I shall tell my brother that La Colle Noire is for sale,” she said immediately upon hearing the news.
The children
Children of the Château de La Colle Noire staff would receive adventure storybooks as gifts for Christmas, and big chocolate eggs for Easter. A large Christmas tree would be put up in the château, and when her brother died, Catherine Dior continued the gift tradition. The children were allowed to swim in the ornamental pond when Monsieur Dior and his guests were not there, and sometimes, swimming competitions were organised for them.
Ivan
Ivan, the Russian-born gardener who worked at Milly la Forêt, came to oversee the garden planning at the Château de La Colle Noire, where the flowerbeds were replanted twice a year.
The telephone
The first telephone line ever to be installed in Montauroux was a direct line connecting Monsieur Dior at the Château de La Colle Noire, to his sister in her house in Callian.
Water
Monsieur Dior had a tremendous amount of work done to bring water from Montauroux to the Château de La Colle Noire, in order to irrigate the domain. The water was brought down from the heights of the village by an immense, 5 km long pipe constructed specially for the domain. Those living nearby benefitted from the arrival of running water in their part of the district.
The ornamental pond
The purely decorative 40-metre long ornamental pond, created by Christian Dior in 1953, also served as a reservoir used for watering the fragrance flower fields situated below the domain. It was emptied twice a year for maintenance and took 3 days to refill. At the suggestion of Hubert, his sister’s stepson, Christian Dior had goldfish put in, and organised a little ceremony with the children to welcome the new “inhabitants” to the domain.
Winter 1956
During the terrible winter of 1956, the workmen at the Château de La Colle Noire could walk on the frozen ice of the ornamental pond.
August 24th
Every year on Saint-Barthelemy’s day, the day of the Montauroux village fête, Monsieur Dior would take part in the festivities along with the village mayor and the parish priest. He was the Honorary President of the Festival Committee, and would make a donation to help organise the festivities (folk dancing and hunting shows). Traditionally, a vine shoot would be burned on the village square, and it was usually one of the Château de La Colle Noire children who would bring it along.
The Comet
One evening during a reception, Christian Dior gathered all the staff’s children together to show them a comet that must have been particularly visible that night in the Provençal sky.
Drawing
Christian Dior never swam in the ornamental pond, preferring to find a quiet spot where he could sketch. According to his close friends, he worked often, looking for inspiration for new dresses and new perfumes.
Dinner
Never more than 12 people… Christian Dior was of course very superstitious and would never have invited 13 people for dinner. Meals at the time were very long and very copious.
Breakfast
Monsieur Dior ate breakfast at 8 o’clock every morning in the ground floor dining room.
Harvest time
In the Château de La Colle Noire jasmine fields, the best picker in Monsieur Dior’s team would pick 1 kilo of jasmine per hour. Up until the mid 2000s, Catherine Dior, based in the village of Callian, 5km away from the Château de La Colle Noire, continued to cultivate Rosa centifolia on her property with an annual harvest of between 600 and 900 kilos. She would then sell her crop to Grasse perfumers. It is strange to think that during the war, the Dior family pulled up their roses to plant vegetables…
The chapel
The Saint-Barthélemy chapel, situated in the heights of Montauroux village, was formerly part of the Château de La Colle Noire domain. Monsieur Dior, who financed the chapel restoration project, donated it to the village in 1953.
The team
Almost a dozen people were in service at Monsieur Dior’s house, including a butler (always in white gloves), valets, a driver, a cook, a kitchen hand and chambermaids etc. Another twenty or so people worked on the agricultural domain and in the garden. The team responsible for the château went back and forth between Paris and Montauroux. They would bring their spouses and children during the holidays, and the Château de La Colle Noire was filled with life.
Mademoiselle Marthe Lefèvre
Known as “Ma,” Mademoiselle Lefèvre had been the Dior family governess, looking after the children in Granville. She and her sister Marie had links to this part of the South of France, which was what had incited Maurice Dior to move there permanently in 1934, when fleeing his financial troubles. Under the supervision of Catherine Dior, she was in charge of everyone working at the Château de La Colle Noire. She died in 1985 aged almost 95.
Renovation works
Christian Dior spent hours and hours of his free time supervising the works at the Château de La Colle Noire with André Svetchine, his architect. Upon Christian Dior’s demise in 1957, the ambitious renovation project for his castle had not yet been completed.
Pot-Pourri
According to René Gruau, Christian Dior adored pot-pourri, which he placed in various rooms around the château. Lavender, which grew in abundance in the Château de La Colle Noire gardens, was part of the pot-pourri composition. Christian Dior loved this flower so much that he also wore lavender eau de toilette.
The fashion show
Catherine Dior told Lucienne Rostagno of Christian Dior’s desire to see the Haute Couture models appear in a fashion show around the ornamental pond at the Château de La Colle Noire.
The almond trees
As soon as he purchased the Château de La Colle Noire in 1951, Christian Dior had 150 almond trees planted. The almond tree is one of the first trees to flower in the year and Christian Dior enjoys their blooms and fragrance in the very early days of spring.
Kindness
All those who previously worked at the domain still praise Monsieur Dior’s kindness and his natural talent for creating good relationships with the teams working in his service. Everyone who knew him speaks of a very affable, easily approachable man. “We never had the impression that he kept people at a distance,” explains someone who knew him then. “He liked people,” says Lucienne Rostagno, who picked flowers for Monsieur Dior and who still lives in the La Colle Noire hamlet.
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