Dior’s Mathilde Favier on her book about life in Paris and the brand’s A-list ambassadors
- Entitled Living Beautifully in Paris in English, Favier’s book shares her and her friends’ – including France’s former first lady Carla Bruni – love for the City of Light
Born and raised in Paris, Favier started her career in fashion in her early twenties, when she and her sister, Victoire de Castellane – now Dior’s creative director of fine jewellery – worked at Chanel alongside their uncle Gilles Dufour, who for many years was Karl Lagerfeld’s right-hand man at the Parisian house.
The book was more than two years in the making, but in an interview in Paris during the couture shows, Favier revealed that 10 years ago, a fortune teller predicted that one day she would write a book. Back then she laughed at the idea – then one day publishing house Flammarion came calling.
“They were really keen on doing something about me but I didn’t feel ready to talk about myself. What was I going to say?” she says. “And then they said, ‘We want to do something about your energy, the equivalent of your Instagram in a book.’”
Favier was an early adopter of the social media platform. At the very beginning she was hesitant, but relented after her children convinced her that if she wanted to have her finger on the pulse of things, she needed to embrace Instagram. “I started to share my taste naturally,” she says. “Even if sometimes when I look at things I’ve shared, I feel I’ve made mistakes, people have always been very nice to me. I’ve never had any negativity on my Instagram because I think I share some kind of humanity.”
Inspired by the Martine à la Plage (Martine at the Beach) children’s book series, about a little girl embarking on adventures in different places, Mathilde à Paris is planned to be the first of many volumes. Favier can’t reveal yet where the second instalment will take her, but she says she is already working on it.
