Beau Travail

Dior Beauty bottles up a storied Granville rose for its newest skin-care product.

PALE PINK PLASTER decorates the exterior of Les Rhumbs, a villa in Granville, France, where the Dior family moved when Christian was a year old. Named after the compass rose, a starlike maritime tool depicted in a floor mosaic, the property instead attuned the future couturier to the floral kind—pruned in the garden or growing along the cliffs. It's the wild variety that Dior Beauty has homed in on. Through a series of hybridizations, the next-gen rose de Granville is the jewel of the brand's Prestige skin care, with active ingredients harnessed from stem to petal. This year, the house inaugurates a six-hectare garden devoted to the sustainable cultivation of these cosmetic powerhouses, powdery pink like the nearby Les Rhumbs (now the Musee Christian Dior). Organic farming practices make use of companion plants to lure friendly fauna and deter pests; extraction methods utilize cold pressure and electromagnetic fraction without the need for solvents. It all powers the latest innovation, Rosapeptide, with 88 bioavailable rose molecules—the star of the revamped, refillable Prestige La Creme. Designed to spur collagen growth, it makes the idea of a perennial bloom something of a tangible reality.