Victoire de Castellane loved sex shop shopping

Victoire de Castellane found buying high heels from sex shops as a youngster “poetic”.

The fashion star is the creative director of fine jewellery at Christian Dior, a position she’s held for 12 years.

Before that she worked at Chanel and she’s always had a deep interest in style. That was nurtured by her family, who encouraged her to find her own personal look as she matured.

“I grew up around adults. [My] Uncle Giles was an assistant at fashion houses like Chloé and Fendi. He used to take me clubbing when I was 15. We would go to flea markets and buy 1950s and 1960s clothes to make an outfit,” she recalled to the February edition of UK magazine Elle. “I would pick up petticoats and tutus, and the only way to buy high heels then was from sex shops. They weren’t all PVC and rubber like now. I’d be served by two prim old ladies with their pet dog on the counter. They were mostly selling silk corsets; it was all very poetic in a way.”

Victoire can still remember the first piece of jewellery she ever had. It was a “plastic snake bracelet” boasting a green stone and she fell in love as soon as she saw it.

Seeing how much she adored the piece the star’s mother treated her to something more expensive, with surprising results.

“My mother made me a gold charm bracelet. When I later turned the charms into earrings, my mother said, ‘What have you done? It took me a year to collect them.’ I replied, ‘Maman, don’t worry, it looks much better as earrings.’”