They shared a love of the land, concerts, painting, art, beauty and flowers, especially roses. They smelled them in their childhood, in the Villa des Rhumbs in Granville (Normandy). Christian and Catherine Dior always had them present in their lives; The first invented a silhouette, the flower woman of his new look, and made them the protagonists of embroidery, prints and fabrics; She, in one of her many lives, had a fresh flower stand in Les Halles in Paris and, years later, she dedicated herself to growing roses and jasmine that she sold to the perfumers of Grasse.
When in 1947 the couturier was shuffling ideas to find the perfect name for his first perfume, the one he asked the perfumer to “smell like love,” Catherine, his favorite sister – she is the only one who appears in his autobiography – entered the living room. Montaigne Avenue meetings. “Look, here comes Miss Dior,” someone said. And it was the name.
Looking ahead to the future as if he were unconsciously aware of the brevity of his career and life, Christian Dior gave the perfume to the guests at his first show. He also sprayed the living rooms of the house abundantly – up to a liter a day on the dates prior to the appointment – ??so that the entire building was impregnated with the new fragrance. He gave Catherine eternity.
Today it is easy to associate Miss Dior with the face of Natalie Portman, her ambassador for years, but who really was Catherine, the original Miss Dior? Member of the resistance, survivor of Gestapo interrogations and a Nazi concentration camp… Quiet, very discreet, faithful, loyal, in love. Fragility of pure steel. Inspiring and determined. The ideal of a strong woman that her brother admired. They were always united. When the Diors were hit hard by the Great Depression of the 1930s, it didn’t take long for them to join Christian in Paris, far from the family’s former splendor. World War II changed everything.
Catherine had met Hervé des Charbonneries in Nice, a married man with whom she would begin an affair. Passionate about politics, she joined the Resistencia F2 network with him as a liaison officer under the pseudonym Caro. Denounced, arrested and tortured, she did not betray anyone and saved, among others, the life of her lover, with whom she would later share her entire life. She spent ten months in a concentration camp.
The woman who was reunited with Christian and Hervé at the end of the conflict needed to return to the flowers to rebuild and heal. Knight of the Legion of Honor, decorated with the Cross and medalist of the resistance… Recognized for her courage, she reinvented herself and never stopped being surrounded by roses.
“Miss Dior? Forever the young perfume of the house,” said Catherine. Trail of a youth that regained the zest for life, she has known how to adapt to the times with ease and a good sense of smell. In 1967, in the midst of the pop revolution, she also gave her name to the ready-to-wear collection, the first dedicated to young people who were changing the rules of dressing. That eternal youth of multiple chords is what inspires the new chapter of Miss Dior by Francis Kurkdjian. “In order for dresses to continue emerging from the bottles of the house of Dior, it is necessary to change things, to reinvent ourselves to always hold up a relevant and seductive mirror to this impetuous youth. I have imagined Miss Dior as a perfume that will be the synthesis of its time,” says the house perfumer. Start point? An unexpected twist of jasmine.
“It is born from those Provence nights dotted with fireflies where jasmine serves as a counterpoint to the melody of the night and the earth. This evoked the inspiration of the original Christian Dior perfume. “This vision and this happiness of the senses have inspired and guided me to revisit and rewrite the score of this mythical perfume,” declares Kurkdjian. For his Miss Dior, he wanted to take up the fruity and sweet, resplendent and enveloping facets of the flower. She has selected a unique jasmine, obtained thanks to a treatment that represents an innovation in harvesting and extraction methods. Picked at dawn in the month of July, when the season begins, the flowers exude green and floral tones, full of indole.
They are then quickly treated following a secret procedure that revives the fruity facets tinged with aromas of strawberry, peach and apricot and the shine of the jasmine extract of yesteryear. This jasmine with facets of red fruits and jam accents distinguishes the new composition of Miss Dior Parfum.
A composition in which floral and woody notes play an abstract olfactory score, within the style of the chypre perfumes of the original Miss Dior. “For me, chypre is the very expression of French-style olfactory sophistication. I wanted at all costs for my new interpretation to pay tribute to him. My Miss Dior is a contemporary chypre. It reflects its time with flowers and woods, but also the sweet tones of wild strawberries,” summarizes Francis Kurkdjian. Invitation to immediate pleasure.
