Truth be told, Les Rhumbs – the blush-pink gabled 19th-century house where Christian Dior grew up in Granville in Normandy, and which he always said exerted a profound influence over his work – is more sturdy than elegant. It is La Colle Noire, the Provençal country house he bought in 1951, that embodies the south-of-France dream as millions aspire to live it now. A graceful, biscuit-coloured manor house dating back to the 15th century and set in rolling hills – no wonder Parfums Dior was so eager to rescue it when it came on the market in 2013.
The restoration, painstakingly carried out by Dior archivists and architects with a generous budget, is a mixture of meticulously authentic interiors – some of which are exactly as Dior first lived in them with the original furniture – and "re-imagined" bedroom suites in the style of friends (and guests) Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall and Salvador Dalí.
To Christian Dior, La Colle Noire – hugging a narrow road that leads to Grasse, and nestling in hundreds of hectares smothered with jasmine, lavender, olives, cherries and vines – must have seemed the brightest of lights.
This was a man who adored flowers. "After women, flowers are the most lovely thing God has given the world," he wrote. One senses flowers may actually have had the edge. For one thing, they didn't possess knees, which Dior found distressingly ugly.
Flowers, especially roses, set the swooningly romantic tone of his collections, as well as providing architectural inspiration for his silhouette. "I drew women-flowers, soft shoulders, fine waists like liana and wide skirts like corolla," he reflected of his Corolle and H-Line silhouettes, which he designed for his first collection under his own label in February 1947.
How fitting, then, that his hugely successful perfumes – the lily of the valley, carnation- and jasmine-infused Miss Dior, Diorella and Diorissimo – enabled him to buy La Colle Noire.
For two or three months a year, La Colle became his haven. As he wrote in his 1956 autobiography, Dior by Dior, "I think of this house now as my real home, the home to which, God willing, I shall one day retire, the home where perhaps I will one day forget Christian Dior, Couturier, and become the neglected private individual again."
Not so neglected. Vincent Leret, patrimony project manager for Parfums Christian Dior, says when Dior decamped to the solitude of La Colle Noire, he was usually surrounded by a retinue of 25, including gardeners, his chef and the latter's wife and children.
Dior's love of both bourgeois opulence and the avant garde are in evidence from the minute you set foot in the property. A visitors' book in the stone-flagged entrance hall contains entries from artist Marc Chagall, and there's a recipe book in the kitchen illustrated by the writer, artist and film director Jean Cocteau.
With its cream-and-red wallpaper and matching silk curtains, tiled fireplace and handsome cherry-wood escritoire facing the shady hills that give the house its name, Dior's small study downstairs is close to idyllic. A card table and old copies of Paris Match bespeak a civilised approach to the daily grind, one that was interspersed with daydreams, walks around his vineyard – and lunch.
He liked to sketch in bed – a small, silk-lined recessed alcove – and even in his marble bath. The latter was neither small nor simple but embellished with gold taps in the shape of swans, which for Dior were another expression of all that was elegant about women.
There is no corner where beauty, luxury, comfort and even simplicity have been left to chance. Dior planted 150 almond trees to scent the air each spring, and installed a flower-fringed, 40-metre ornamental pool – a grand reworking of the small pond he designed, aged 15, for his mother Madeleine's rose garden at Les Rhumbs.
For Dior himself, the haven was brief. He died suddenly in 1957, aged 52. La Colle Noire was left to his sister Catherine, after whom Miss Dior was named. Large and expensive to run, it was sold not long after and passed through several owners.
It has taken three years of sleuthing and study to restore it to its 1954 apotheosis – with 2016 twists. In May, it was officially declared open with a party at which Charlize Theron was guest of honour and a perfume called La Colle Noire, created by François Demachy, was launched.
There will be other parties, other public events, other perfume launches. But the acquisition was about more than these. For an international brand like Dior, La Colle Noire is that most precious of things: a reminder of its sense of place in a globalised world.