At the source of inspiration
Although Christian Dior was not born in Villa Les Rhumbs, it was here that he took his first steps: “My childhood home was roughcast in the softest of pinks, mixed with grey gravel, and these two colours have remained my favourite hues in couture”.
Before the Diors
The Diors purchased the “Villa des Falaises” from the shipowner Georges Beust in 1906 and chose to rename it “Les Rhumbs“, in reference to the decorative compass rose motif on the bow window’s tiling. A rhumb is the term for a compass angle in maritime navigation.
The main alteration to its external appearance was the addition of a winter garden, as Christian Dior tells us in his autobiography: “As my mother had a passion for green plants, a protuberance had been stuck on to the front of the house without the least attempt at harmony – a 1900 wrought-iron conservatory“.
To find out more about Villa Les Rhumbs’ history, take a look at Les Dior et Granville by Françoise Mouchel and Patrick Courault.
In the days of the Diors
“Our house at Granville [was] like all Anglo-Norman buildings at the end of the last century […], all the same I look back on it with tenderness as well as amazement. In a certain sense, my whole way of life was influenced by its architecture and environment”. In these few words, Christian Dior expressed his visceral attachment to his childhood home, the house where he had taken his first steps.
An islet of greenery in what was an almost desert neighbourhood at the time, the garden was laid out by Madeleine Dior, assisted by her son Christian. The bourgeois house boasted an abundance of ornamentation, composed of objects of all kinds, trinkets and plants, in which Japonism, which was still in vogue at the time, certainly exerted an influence: “Large panels painted in imitation of Japanese prints adorned the whole staircase. These versions of Utamaro and Hokusai made up my Sistine Chapel“. Pagoda roofs and bamboo frames added to an exoticism conducive to daydreaming on the part of the future couturier, who would remember it in his collections from 1947 onwards.
To find out more about the Diors’ industrial adventure, take part in the guided tour “The Diors in Granville, an Enterprising Family”:
Cultural programming
After the Diors
The 1929 crisis decimated the Diors’ wealth and they were forced to part with their property. It was purchased in 1938 by the City of Granville, which wanted to turn the family garden into the public garden “that Granville lacked”. Various members of the municipal council wanted to demolish the villa and replace it with a terrace. The outbreak of the Second World War put a stop to that part of the project, but the garden did in fact become a public garden. The house went on to be occupied by various City of Granville tenants before the Christian Dior Museum project came to light in the 1980s.
Since 1997
It took ten years to open the Christian Dior Museum to the public following the exhibition Christian Dior, the Other Himself, presented at the Richard Anacréon Museum of Modern Art in 1987, whose success convinced the various partners of the interest of a museum devoted to Granville’s illustrious native son.
The Diors sold the furniture in 1935 and the house itself in 1938. Rather than trying to recreate an interior like the one Christian so succinctly described in his autobiography, and of which no photographs existed, it was decided to devote Villa Les Rhumbs to thematic fashion exhibitions renewed every year.
Exhibition rooms were created for the presentation of fragile collections that were sensitive to light and required specific climatic conditions. Several dozen exhibitions have been mounted since 1997, exploring various facets of creation from Christian Dior’s era to the present day. Over a million visitors have discovered the couturier’s childhood villa since it opened.
Discover the history of the Museum since it opened to the public
Discover the Christian Dior Museum
Ready to enjoy a backstage view of the great couturier’s creativity? Come to the Christian Dior Museum and discover its originality. Don’t hesitate to book your ticket online so as to avoid having to queue.