THE SPIRIT OF PERFUME

Without a doubt, the essence, the elegance and the spirit of Dior live on more than ever in a new adventure, guided by boundless, virtuoso radicality: “Les Esprits de Parfum are a stylistic exercise that reflects the House’s Couture spirit, my vision of luxury and Dior’s creativity. I pushed them to the limit by cutting into the material and daring to shake them up. I wanted their language to assert a real aesthetic bias, and for their trails to be powerful,” explains Francis Kurkdjian as he describes the process of revisiting La Collection Privée Christian Dior’s five most emblematic fragrances, embodying as many olfactory families that make these totemic perfumes so unique.

First, Gris Dior, an iconic woody floral – a tribute to Monsieur Dior’s favourite shade, found at 30 Montaigne – densifies like storm clouds gathering in the sky. This signature chypre becomes even more intense with an alliance of Bulgarian rose and violet, cedar and patchouli. It brings to mind the tones of Fifties silhouettes evoked by Christian Dior as “this rather dark grey, Uranium Grey”, to transcribe the electrified light of Paris one perceives in the marvellous Gris Dior Esprit de Parfum. An apex of high perfumery joined by Lucky – (initially) a bouquet of white flowers par excellence, with lily-of-the-valley for good luck – now surprisingly darkened by a black wood with coffee accents, an absolute surprise whose trail envelops and enchants for a long while. There is also Rouge Trafalgar Esprit de Parfum, a fruity floral that becomes “an even redder red”, a crisp, hyper-attractive, totally addictive candied apple. The Oriental Oud Ispahan Esprit de Parfum, on the other hand, grants pride of place to spices woven into a fabric that is like a colourful odyssey through One Thousand and One Nights. Lastly, Ambre Nuit Esprit de Parfum reveals all the sensual, feline, almost smoky facets of an amber heart dominated by a duo of cinnamon and cardamom, like a moonless night.

These reworkings brim with flashes of brilliance, eliciting more explosive, concentrated extracts that reveal, in a magnified version, everything that makes La Collection Privée Christian Dior both ultra-modern and timeless. A part of the luxury and dream of Dior, in precious 80ml bottles with clean, architectural lines and deep black, textured labels that reflect that rarity of couture, the pinnacle of singularity. Like a chanson de geste, a contemporary saga of extreme purity and infinite precision.