Paris /FWD/ -- Victoire de Castellane bustles into her office, shoulder-length hair flying, trademark bangs bouncing. In day-glo stockings, platform wedges, and a sheer, frilly red cardigan atop a snug green mini-dress, she is a collision of curves and colors jarring enough to make your retinas snap. She has a naďve breeziness reminiscent of one of her favorite gamine heroine, Shirley MacLaine in "Irma LaDouce." A curious role model considering de Castellane's pedigree: a blue-blooded chatelaine who designs fine jewelry for one of Paris's most venerable couture houses.

De Castellane has been designing haute joaillerie for Christian Dior since their jewelry line was launched in 1998. And this fall, when Dior opens its fourth boutique at Place Vendome in the heart of Paris's formidable jewelry district, she will be taken even further in to the fold.

Her bold, glamorous creations like the Roi Soleil -- a flaming starfish necklace of 3000 yellow and orange sapphires - have reinvigorated the conservative world of fine jewelry making. She artfully reinterprets Dior's romantic couture - its bows and ribbons, its houndstooth check and pastel hues - in the stone and metal vocabulary of haute jewelry. Yet at the same time, her creations have all the personality and whimsy of their maker. De Castellane bow-ties ribbons of diamonds and rubies into demure debutante necklaces; she turns emeralds, orange sapphires, diamonds and gold into a brooch of baby carrots; she conjures coral into a chunky ring of roses upon which has alighted a bumblebee.

"I like things that are exaggerated," declares De Castellane. "Big, comic book-style jewelry, because jewelry's only beautiful if you take notice of it."

De Castellane is one of the fortunate ones who made her obsession her profession. She has been a jewelry fanatic since watching her grandmother, Sylvia Hennessy of Hennessy cognac fame, change her baubles to match her different outfits several times a day. By the time she was 11, de Castellane was sketching her jewelry designs and having them made at an atelier. She even melted down her catechism medals and turned them into trinkets.

The jewelry designer's fashion roots run deep - she is the niece of Gilles Dufour, Karl Lagerfeld's longtime assistant at Chanel, and she spent 14 years designing jewels chez Chanel - but her career is entirely talent based. And it is her playfulness that truly sets her apart.

"I like to tell stories with my jewelry," says De Castellane. "The 'Milly La Foręt' collection, for example, was inspired by Mr. Dior's country house, where he loved to work in his garden. I thought it would be interesting to bring something new into jewelry, with little fruits and vegetables made of gems, just as if nature had been transformed into stone."

Witty, flamboyant, sensual, de Castellane's pieces aren't just future heirlooms - they are today's couture conversation pieces. "I like things to be over the top," she explains. "Either too big or too small, but never in the middle. Average doesn't interest me at all."