HOW A SUMMER IN THE GARDEN CHANGED MY LIFE

One moment, she was a woman in a hurry. The next, she was observing, testing, toiling in beds of slow growth and newfound expressions of beauty. Cordelia de Castellane, artistic director of Dior Maison and Baby Dior, shares the season that changed everything.

- TRACEY MINKIN

Flowers have always been my best friends.

So, of course, they came to my aid in a dark and desolate season—the summer I lost my father to Covid. Not only did their beauty help me begin to heal, but I found that their world, the garden, changed my world. The garden taught me a new way to create and to live.

It was in my heart from the beginning. I grew up surrounded by nature at my grandparents’ home in Switzerland, where my grandmother and I collected and pressed botanicals together; my mother was also obsessed with flowers, especially roses and camellias. But once I began working in Paris—first for Emanuel Ungaro and then for Dior, where I now oversee Maison Dior, Baby Dior, and decoration for major events—I became a city girl. That life was about dresses and going out at night, and I loved it.