In appearance, Mathilde Favier is as Parisian as a pastel-hued Ladurée macaron, with a gamine crop, feline eyes, and a wardrobe full of Dior. Yet in disposition, she has a vivacity that belies the French perma-gloom only heightened by a turbulent few months in politics and the leadup to the Paris Olympics. “I want to be the ambassador of a happy France, a happy Paris,” she says, merrily mixing up matcha tea one rainy May morning. “There are many things to complain about. But it’s not constructive. If you have a solution, let’s go. But if you spend your life complaining, what’s the point? It makes life gray.”
Favier on the balcony of her 16th arrondissement apartment, in a Dior evening dress by Maria Grazia Chiuri. When getting dressed, Favier says, “I am inspired by the beauty of life.”Photo: Pascal Chevallier
Her duplex apartment, in the haut-monde 16th arrondissement, delights in a similar mix of bourgeois deference to French classicism and pleasure-seeking quirk. For starters, the sweeping wrought-iron Maison Jansen staircase in the entrance hall is carpeted in a deep lavender millefleur pile. Upon closer inspection, it’s the same carpet that Judy Chicago installed at Dior’s spring 2020 haute couture show (the octogenarian artist tinted her hair violet to match). “I didn’t hesitate for one second,” says Favier, whose job managing celebrity relationships at Dior Couture saw her dress and then ferry multiple VIPs to their front-row seats while simultaneously sizing up the flooring. “When I saw the show I said, I want that.”
We’re sitting on a squashy chintz-covered sofa in Favier’s perfectly proportioned salon. Our matcha tea, in delicate porcelain La Double J tea cups, rests on two Madeleine Castaing mahogany coffee tables offset with a beaded Yoruba chair from Paris’s CSAO boutique and a pink Romanian rug. Mathilde wears a cream cardigan with an embroidered heart, white cord trousers, and Dior patent kitten heels with grosgrain bows. On her finger sits a mauve opal cocktail ring that’s just shy of a robin’s egg in size, an impromptu gift from her older half-sister Victoire de Castellane, Dior’s fine jewelry designer since 1998. She’s had a busy month: after a Dior cruise show in New York where she entertained the actors Charlize Theron, Michelle Williams, and Rosamund Pike, she headed to Dior’s Naumachia charity ball in Venice, then back to Paris to launch her new book.