News feed
When GRAZIA met with Dior’s perfume creation director, Francis Kurkdjian, in May of last year, we did so on hallowed soil. At Christian Dior’s country chateau in Provence, to be exact, just a little north of Montauroux in Grasse. Standing outside the storied home—and staring out at the evening light pattering the paddocks in the distance—Kurkdjian riffed on how this exact spot served as inspiration for his new work.
“Part of the process that is very specific to Dior is that the inspiration can come from the garden,” he mused at the time. “I tried to understand what Mr. Dior was thinking when he was working. The thing that I smell in the fields during a harvest season that I will use for a [future] perfume, is truly transpired from moments in this garden.”
Enter the new Miss Dior fragrance, a floral, woody reinterpretation of its original and punctuated by wild strawberries, apricots and peaches. Just as he did with L’Or de J’adore, Kurkdjian deconstructed Miss Dior’s original 77-year-old formula and magnified its characteristic note—jasmine. He did so by examining the secret extraction methods used in 1947 and harvested the flower at the same time: the break of day in July. What resulted is youthful, elegant, sweet and juicy.
“Miss Dior was born from evenings in Provence illuminated by fireflies where green jasmine harmonises with the melody of night and earth,” Mr. Dior famously said.
“The words of Christian Dior are powerful and evocative when he talks about the inspiration of Miss Dior,” remarks Kurkdjian. “They provide a wonderful summary of a story that still continues to link Dior and Perfume, as well as Dior and the South of France that he so loved. They summon the scents of nature and the beauty of that magical, gently starlit night. It is as though one can smell the scent of jasmine in the air. This vision and the happiness of the senses inspired me and guided me to revisit and rewrite the composition of this legendary perfume, ‘my’ Miss Dior.”
“We thought that the founding story of Miss Dior was really well known,” he continues. “But on looking back at how the fragrance was created, we discovered new anecdotes, new accounts and new facts that were little known until now, studded throughout its creation.”
You, too, can be transported to Mr. Dior’s garden in the South Of France by shopping the new Miss Dior Parfum below.
Miss dior Parfum, $219 SHOP NOW
