Delphine de Causans was born and raised in Paris. After graduating from La Sorbonne University with a Masters Degree in Contemporary Art, she is now studying at Christies while working as a freelance art advisor and critic.
While the worlds of contemporary art and high fashion may be different, they share passions and themes. Today, I would like to introduce you to a crossover between the two worlds, courtesy of Jean-Michel Othoniel, a French-born artist who lives and works in Paris. Othoniel, who has previously collaborated with fashion houses such as Chanel or Dior, is known for his beautiful sculptures of glass and aluminum. Othoniel’s works are on display everywhere from New York’s Museum of Modern Art to the Centre Pompidou in Paris to the Chanel boutiques around the world, thanks to his collaboration with architect Peter Marino.
Recently, Othoniel has undertaken a collaboration with Delphine Arnault, who sits on the board of directors at LVMH (her father Bernard Arnault is the a luxury conglomerate’s CEO). Ms Arnault tapped Othoniel to redesign the bottle of J’adore Dior, an iconic fragrance from fashion house Christian Dior. A golden potion created by iconic French perfumer Francois Demachy, J’Adore is famous within the beauty industry for its distinct arrangement of flowers from faraway lands, including Turkish damascena rose, jasmine sambac and Indian tuberose.
The original design for the J’Adore bottle was itself a thing of beauty; stacks of thin gold bands form an almost tribal-looking necklace, evoking the traditions of the Kayan Lahwi tribes, whose women distinguish themselves by elongating their necks with stacks of brass neck coils. Girls begin wearing the coils as young as five, adding stacks throughout their lives until their necks are literally stretched out – at which point they can no longer remove the stacks, which support their elongated bones.
When Othoniel began his redesign of the bottle, he loosened the constraints of the necklace, as if to say – Women are free to wear what they want! Othoniel’s limited Artist Edition (only 300 will be produced) was inspired by the “en huit” lines of the original bottle, but transforms the tight necklace into a loose, etheral coil of gold draping delicately around the bottle. Othoniel called upon the Murano glassmakers of Venice, Italy, to make the handblown glass bottle, as technical as it is detailed. The wire and bead decorating Othoniel’s bottle are flecked with gold leaf, melted into the molten glass.
The Jean-Michel Othoniel J’Adore Dior Artist Edition retails for $3,500.00. For more information, please visit the Dior website.
