Madeleine Dior

Marie Madeleine Juliette Martin (; 1879–1931) was the wife of the industrialist Maurice Dior, known for her English-style garden at her villa Les Rhumbs in Granville, Manche, France. She was also the mother of the grand couturier Christian Dior and the French Resistance member Catherine Dior.

Biography Madeleine Martin was the daughter of a lawyer from Angers and Juliette Surosne, originally from the department of Calvados, France. Monsieur Martin died young and Madeleine was brought up by her mother.

In 1898, at the age of 19, she married Maurice Dior who was 26 years old. The couple moved to the center of Granville in the department of Manche, where Maurice Dior had grown up.

In 1905, to satisfy Madeleine, who did not like the house in the center of town, the Dior family purchased a property that was still in Granville but on the edge of a cliff, facing the sea. It had a large piece of adjoining land which Madeleine Dior transformed into a southern-style garden, overcoming the hostility of the winds blowing in from the sea to grow delicate plants. Madeleine Dior excelled as the lady of the house and a woman of taste, decorating the apartment in the Louis XVI-Passy style fashionable at the time. The creation of the garden became a two-person job, which created a bond between Madeleine Dior and her son: the latter organized it by positioning the features, while she took care of the planting. The result was a complex planting scheme that sheltered the most fragile flowers from the wind: "Madeleine Dior's planting formed curtains of shielding greenery, so that the second was more precious and the third consisted of plants that it would have been impossible to grow here: geraniums, roses, jasmine... All these protective screens created layers, structures and motif effects," explains the garden's current landscape gardener.

James de Coquet, journalist for Le Figaro, remembered being amazed by his visit to Les Rhumbs in 1929: "I complimented Madame Dior on her beautiful garden. I told her she must have an excellent gardener."

In 1997, the villa, which had been purchased by the town of Granville in 1932, became the Musée Christian Dior.

The couturier remembered his mother when, years after her death, on the eve of his first runway show, he was looking at the façade of the House that bore his name on Avenue Montaigne and exclaimed: "If Mother had lived, I would never have dared."

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