Marble, Modern Art, and Monkeys: Inside Dior Designer Cordelia De Castellane’s Left Bank Apartment in Paris

It helps that de Castellane’s heritage is steeped in aristocratic glamour. Among her relatives are Emilio Terry, the architect and interior designer who counted Salvador Dalí and Jean-Michel Frank as friends, and Victoire de Castellane, the larger-than-life jewelry designer at Dior. Her Greek mother, Atalanta, is an interior designer and the best friend of Gilles Dufour, former right-hand man to Karl Lagerfeld, who secured Cordelia an internship at Chanel at 15. A year later, she left school for a placement at Emanuel Ungaro, where she progressed from picking up pins from the couture atelier floor to a role as a public relations executive. After nine years, she left to launch her own childrenswear company, C de C. Soon enough, in 2012, Dior came calling.

She feels a special kinship with Monsieur Dior, whom she talks about affectionately, almost as though he were still alive. “He’s kind of my best friend at Dior,” she says. The couturier remains her touchstone when embarking on designs for the five collections of childrenswear she turns out a year, alongside homeware and in addition to curating the gala dinners the brand regularly hosts in Venice. Like the founder, she is obsessed with gardening: her apartment is filled with cut flowers from her country estate in L’Oise, north of Paris. “Flowers bring me a lot of inspiration—it’s about the palette, the temporality, how much beauty can bring you joy in a very short space of time,” she says. De Castellane also appreciates Dior’s sensitivity.“We are both Aquarius and both very superstitious.” Those monkeys in her hallway are not there by chance: Monsieur Dior frequently used them in his work, believing they brought good luck. “And I’m Greek,” says de Castellane, in wry solidarity, gesturing at the many charm bracelets that crowd her wrists.

Her Paris home appears to conform to Dior’s decorating maxims too. In his memoirs, the couturier observed: “To an impeccably decorated interior, I will always prefer one that’s more sensitive and spirited, which has gradually developed over time according to the existence and whims of its inhabitant.” There’s one snag. Despite the impeccably layered scene, de Castellane only moved into the apartment a month prior to Vogue’s visit. Still, it turns out she’s big on whim. Having lived in a rambling three-storey duplex in the same neighborhood since 2006, last summer she had the sudden urge to move and spent four months looking for a new place. This one was listed online one morning, she saw it the same day at 12 noon and an hour later her offer had been accepted. “I felt it had a very good vibration—I didn’t really look at the [floor] plan, it was more the feeling,” she says.