Longtime readers might recognize Cordelia de Castellane from posts from 2007 and 2009 which highlighted her Paris apartments. Now Architectural Digest has just featured her weekend (and quarantine) house in the French countryside in their September fashion issue. Fashion and design are subjects that Cordelia knows a lot about too.

Her mother was a decorator and her cousin is Victoire de Castellane, the jewelry designer for Christian Dior, and she’s also a great grand-niece of the celebrated French architect Emilio Terry. As a teenager she spent her holidays interning at Chanel, where her uncle Gilles Dufour was Karl Lagerfeld’s right-hand man. After she left school at seventeen she got her first job at Emanuel Ungaro which is also where mother-in-law was a director for years. Oh, and her ex-husband is the grandson of legendary French fashion designer Jeanne Lanvin.

She designed her own line of children’s clothing for ten years and after she closed it in 2012, Dior hired her to design Baby Dior. In 2017, she was tapped to become the first artistic director for Dior Maison whose coveted collection was only available at Dior store on the Avenue Montaigne in Paris but it will finally be available in the United States soon.

Her eye for color and pattern is apparent in this country house, as are the eclectic mix of styles and periods that fill each room. “I was the youngest of three children and I spent my holidays with my parents; we went to the Biennale, to museums all over the world. I’m a collector; wherever I go I love to pick up unusual pieces.”

To read the entire story by Gay Gassmann and see more photos of the house, pick up the September 2020 issue of Architectural Digest or click here. I also mixed in some of Cordelia’s Instagram photos with those by Matthieu Salvaing for AD.