PARIS — What’s the first word that comes to mind when looking at a miniature tableau depicting a moonlit garden with trees of gold, diamond stars and a night sky cut from a lacquered mother-of-pearl?  

If “exquisite” is what you’d go for, that’s in a nutshell the throughline of the Diorexquis high jewelry collection unveiled at Friday at the Château de La Colle Noire, Christian Dior‘s home in the south of France.

The 163 jewels imagined by Victoire de Castellane, artistic director of Dior Joaillerie, were so many windows offering glimpses of precious gardens, zoomed in on opulent bouquets or captured gowns lined up for a ball.

“I quite like playing with qualifiers that speak of the marvelous, of the charming, of ravishing [things] — about desire and joy,” she told WWD at fittings in Paris in the run-up to the event, which saw her creations paired with 25 couture dresses imagined by Maria Grazia Chiuri, the house’s creative director of womenswear.

While exceptional stones such as a 13-carat oval-cut diamond, more than 45 carats of yellow ones or a 10-carat Colombian emerald made for memorable designs, it’s delight that de Castellane was pursuing with fervor.

Hence the charming dioramas as well as a gem-encrusted lipstick case necklace, but also the way jewels were dispatched across different parts of the body, playing peekaboo at the waist or dangling at the nape of the neck.

But the viewer wasn’t the only one the jewelry designer sought to please.

“I find that creation is about having fun, finding something that makes you dream,” she said. “It’s looking for joy at all costs in creation and pushing it toward dreams.”

What thrilled de Castellane and Dior’s jewelry artisans here was harnessing ancient techniques to great effect.  

Changeant skies or moving water were executed using the opal doublet technique, which sees a layer of opal paired with another stone to create new depths.

“There was also [something about] playing with new gem materials,” she continued. “I played with layers of precious and semiprecious stones to find new orients, new iridescences [which] lend themselves as backdrops for stories around nature and tender, joyful feelings.”

Case in point: the Diorexquis Pluie d’été set, which includes a necklace, a ring, a brooch, earrings and a delicate earcuff. The opal doublet figures a stormy summer sky, the changeant nuances of the precious stone made all the more dramatic by a black onyx layer underneath.

An opal and mother-of-pearl combination brought out the rosy fires of a 12.57-carat cushion-cut pink sapphire that is the center stone of the Diorexquis Bouquet des Roses set.

The play of light and transparencies in each design telegraphed the delight that de Castellane spoke about.

Another star technique in this high jewelry collection is plique-à-jour, which sees enamel applied without a backing. The result is akin to stained glass windows, with the gold outline delicately holding translucent colored elements.

It was employed to great effect in the Diorexquis Jardin du Cygne design.

Foliage figured in green and blue translucent enamel caught the light and seemed to be reflected in the flashes running in the cabochon black Australian opal of nearly 4 carats at the heart of the set’s necklace.

Elsewhere, gradient enameling expanded on the colored claws that de Castellane favors, enhancing the playful delicacy of the Bouquet Milly Paraiba jewels, all featuring intense blue-green tourmalines and a palette that went from soft pinks to purples — in stones as well as enamel.

If delightful landscapes and delicate bouquets weren’t enough, a third chapter in the collection explored another passion of Monsieur Dior: fabulous balls.

Diamond-framed windows and curtains figured in sweeping lines of pink rubies offered glimpses of opulent gowns, each different from the next. As a backdrop, doublets of aventurine glass over mother-of-pearl telegraphed the impression of an enchanting event.

It prefigured the finale of the night at La Colle Noire, which included a performance by South African soprano Pretty Yende and ended with a tableau of models in their couture finery posing by the basin of the property in Provence as fireworks lit up the night sky.