Cutting a dash as one of the year’s sweetest releases, this fluttering wrist piece is an homage to the very origins of the House of Dior
Considering its fame as principally a fashion Maison, Dior has long flirted with horology. From its first tentative footsteps into timepieces in 1975 to acquiring its own watchmaking development and manufacture facilities in Switzerland’s horological heartland of La Chaux-de-Fonds in 2001, it’s been a long game played well.
With the advent of the Grand Soir collection in 2010, Dior began to take a more introspective view, using these sometimes-one-off timepieces as a medium to tell the Maison’s story, with classic motifs and muses often expressed through each watch’s adornments. The newly-launched Dior Grand Soir Papillon is no different, this time using the House’s accrued decades of savoir-faire to produce an arresting figure that expresses some of Christian Dior’s very earliest influences, those of his youth spent in the lush gardens of his childhood home in Granville, in the northern French coastal region of Normandy.
With nature a recurring theme throughout the Maison’s collections, Monsieur Dior’s fascination for florals, botanicals and all creatures great and small was nurtured during his early years, with his revolutionary 1950s shapes sporting embroideries and brooches that frequently referenced these icons. As a throwback to these early styles and experiences, the butterfly featured in this timepiece looks as though it could almost flutter away — but in a genius combination of mother of pearl, painted gallus gallus feathers, sapphires, spinels, diamond and opal, all set in gleaming yellow gold, it’s a permanent addition to this evocative line of timepieces.
The snow-set diamond dial, bezel and lugs, in 18 carat white gold, makes it appear as though the butterfly has gently alighted on its surface, while the sleek black strap is the understated Dior touch that pulls it all together.
This is the third in a recognisable trio of insect-inspired timepieces that have appeared in the artful Dior Grand Soir series, the first being the bee-adorned Reine des Abeilles in 2019, followed by the Libellule’s delicate dragonfly in 2022. An evolution of its predecessors, the Papillon pulls together the strongest aspects of the two watches that came before it, in an explosion of delicate colour and eye-catching black outlines. With a teeny hour and minute hand perched above the butterfly inside the 36mm case, this is decidedly a watch that’s less about time and more about look. But as tributes to the birth of the House of Dior go, it’d be difficult to choose a more fitting example. Grace and beauty, all wrapped up in a neat, elegant package — what could be more Dior than that?
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- Words by Rachel Silvestri
