The longtime Public Relations Director of Christian Dior Couture, who spent nearly 15 years shaping the relationships and cultural world surrounding the maison, leaves behind a legacy of elegance, warmth and an extraordinary instinct for connection.
Mathilde Favier, the longtime Public Relations Director of Christian Dior Couture and one of the most recognisable figures behind the maison, passed away on Monday, 17 August, aged 57. She was travelling with her partner, French Producer Nicolas Altmayer, 61, when their car collided with an oncoming lorry in the Deux-Sèvres region while overtaking another vehicle. Altmayer passed away alongside her.
French authorities have opened an investigation to determine the precise circumstances of the crash.
Their passing brings together, in tragedy, two figures whose careers occupied different corners of French cultural life, with Altmayer an icon of French cinema in his own right, co-founding the production house Mandarin & Compagnie with his brother Éric in the mid 1990s, and across three decades and more than 70 features built one of the defining catalogues of contemporary French film. In 2017 the Altmayer brothers received the Académie des César’s Prix Daniel Toscan du Plantier for Producer of the Year, a rare formal recognition for two decades spent quietly shaping French film from behind the camera.
François Ozon, a longtime collaborator, called him a great producer, and above all, a supporter and a friend.
For Favier, fashion had been part of life almost from the beginning. Born into one of Paris’ creative families—her half-sister, Victoire de Castellane, is Dior’s Creative Director of Fine Jewellery, and her uncle, Gilles Dufour, was one of Karl Lagerfeld’s longest-standing collaborators—she entered the industry in her early teens through that same Lagerfeld connection. She went on to work at Glamour and Prada before joining Dior in 2011, where she would spend the next 15 years, ultimately serving as Public Relations Director.
At Dior, Favier’s remit extended well beyond conventional public relations. As the executive responsible for global celebrity relations, she occupied the space between the maison and the actors, musicians and cultural figures who came to represent it, cultivating relationships with some of the most recognisable women in contemporary culture, and shaping how Dior Couture’s public image was built and sustained.
Yet her particular influence was harder to quantify than any title suggested.
Long regarded as one of the best-connected women in Paris, Favier belonged to a tradition of luxury in which discretion, hospitality and personal relationships mattered as much as visibility. Her network extended across fashion, film, art, interiors and gastronomy, but the relationships she cultivated were never merely professional currency, they were friendships, often sustained over decades. Through different creative eras at Dior, she remained one of its constants: custodian not of its clothes, but of the world around them. As luxury became more global and celebrity more central to how houses communicate, Favier understood that access alone was never enough. The relationship had to feel personal.
That instinct extended well beyond her professional life. In 2024 she published Mathilde à Paris, written with the journalist Frédérique Dedet and released in English as Living Beautifully in Paris, an intimate portrait of the city through the people, places and rituals she loved, moving between fashion and food, gardens and interiors, artisans and artists. It revealed a conception of Parisian elegance rooted less in status than in curiosity, generosity and attention. She was also a founding member of Esthétique & Cancer, an association supporting people undergoing cancer treatment through beauty and wellness programmes.
Only months before her passing, that instinct became the subject of Mathilde & Friends in Paris, an exhibition and online sale at Christie’s built from objects belonging to Favier and to her circle, less a conventional auction than a portrait assembled through beautiful things, friendships and memory. Even the boards from her Dior office, covered in handwritten notes, photographs and letters from friends, were photographed and folded into the installation: an unusually intimate glimpse into the relationships that sat behind a career spent cultivating them.
The tributes since her passing have carried the language of affection as much as professional admiration. Dior remembered her as an exceptional woman whose communicative joy, talent and loyalty were exemplary. Delphine Arnault, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Christian Dior Couture, said the house had lost an extraordinary professional, and she, a loyal friend, adding that Favier’s optimism and courage had commanded real admiration. Bernard Arnault, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of LVMH, paid tribute to the passion, energy and talent she had devoted to the house across so many years. For Dior’s Creative Director Jonathan Anderson, who called Favier the happiest, kindest and most generous person, the quality she represented was simpler still: elegance.
Favier is survived by her two children, Héloïse and Carlo Agostinelli, from her first marriage to the American financier Robert Agostinelli, Co-founder of the private equity firm Rhône Group, as well as endless family, friends and an industry deeply mourning the loss of a legendary figure.