Late last year a video was posted on the Dior YouTube channel but I doubt all of you have seen it. I thought given that spring has begun in the western world there is no better time to share it with you than now. Last weekend this short feature caught my attention and held me in from start to finish. Designer Christian Dior was known to have been deeply inspired by the beauty of resilient wild cliff roses in his childhood place, Granville which faced the sea. His home there has now come to be known as the Dior Gardens. Christian’s mother, Madeleine Dior, before passing away tragically had previously installed a rose garden in their home which is what fueled his admiration for the flower. In the Loire Valley, also in Normandy, a team of horticulturists, experts in ethnobotany, have innovated by taking that cliff rose and purposefully crossbreeding it manually with other roses to produce a new kind of rose to be used as a sustainable cosmetic resource.
Petals being stripped from the bud of a different rose in the process of crossbreeding to create the Rose of Granville. (Photos are stills from the video feature)
The Dior horticultural team have tenderly named the new rose “La Rose de Granville” or the Rose of Granville. From it they take extracts used for improving skin vitality and also incorporate the flower’s anti-inflammatory properties into their Prestige skincare range. The crossbred Rose de Granville is just as beautiful to behold as it is essential. Watch this Dior film feature on the Rose de Granville and be inspired.
