A New Star
is Born

An ode to the rose, Christian Dior’s beloved “queen of flowers”. A highly anticipated addition to La Collection Privée, Rose Star blends heritage and modernity in a generous, sensual universal fragrance. Its creator, Francis Kurkdjian, recounts how it came to life. By Marie Audran.

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“Blending heritage and modernity, masculine and feminine creates a fabulous spectrum that’s fascinating to explore at Dior.”

– Francis Kurkdjian

MARIE AUDRAN: Rose Star celebrates two of Dior’s favourite codes…

FRANCIS KURKDJIAN: Exactly. I wanted to layer the five points of Monsieur Dior’s lucky star over the five facets of the rose, bringing together two very powerful House codes: Christian Dior’s star, which changed and guided his destiny, prompting him to open his own House in 1946. And a love of roses and flowers, which he cultivated throughout his life, starting from childhood in his mother Madeleine’s rose garden, all the way through to the fields of centifolia rose at La Colle Noire, his house in the South of France, just a few kilometres outside of Grasse.

MA: The rose: a star in La Collection Privée Christian Dior and the art of perfumery in general… What makes your Rose Star so distinctive?

FK: It stands out because it’s Dior! For opulence, its “corolla spirit” and a silkiness that is unique to Dior, for a roundness that is structured yet voluptuous and expresses itself in several ways: when you turn a Dior dress upside down, you see the corolla of a rose evoking the iconic Junon dress, a masterpiece of haute couture designed by Christian Dior in 1949 that is still modern. When we create a Dior fragrance, we incorporate that enduring, timeless iconography. Just how referential and where the past ends are important to consider, to avoid being too literal: while I love history, I also love impertinence…

MA: How did you bring out all the modernity and audacity of the rose?

FK: Unlike jasmine, whose varieties have relatively formatted fragrance, roses offer an immense plurality of scents; paradoxically, only two are used in perfumery.^* In this case, I chose not to highlight the classic rose-patchouli accord, but rather to elevate this rose with a fruity facet.

^*The damascena rose and the centifolia rose, aka the May Rose.

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MA: In what way does Rose Star assert its universality?

FK: Since it was created in 2004, La Collection Privée has broken with convention and knows no boundaries between masculine and feminine – for that reason, I wanted a gender-neutral rose inspired by Christian Dior’s muse: the centifolia rose from Grasse. I sought out the five facets of the rose that could correspond to the five branches of the couturier’s lucky star: citrusy and slightly lemony; a burst of fruitiness with notes of lychee tinged with raspberry; a spicy facet with a hint of clove; a honeyed, slightly jammy facet; and the fifth, which could be the rose’s umami: a sensation as velvety as a petal, carnal, enveloping, like a caress. Its musky creaminess is accompanied by a clear, brilliant, almost metallic woody note – it’s almost as if the wood had been dipped in steel or titanium, an oblique nod to the rose’s thorns.

MA: You are very visual in your creative process: how would you depict the singularity of Rose Star?

FK: I don’t know how to draw, and that’s partially why I became a perfumer, but Rose Star has a structured velvety texture, an architectural duality, as if the stem were spiralling through the flower from bottom to top, like a backbone that keeps this rose from being overtly lascivious. It unfolds in 3D, like a work of architecture, like a piece of couture, with the rose and the star together forming a compass rose, another powerful Dior code to evoke a contemporary olfactory dance.

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A New Staris Born

A New Star
is Born