Dior: Perfume Began as the Scent of Love, Then Became the Final Dress for Women Around the World

“After women, flowers are the most beautiful things God has given the world.”
— Christian Dior​

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Basic Information

• Founded: December 16, 1946 (fashion house) / March 1947 (Parfums Christian Dior)
• Founder: Christian Dior (1905–1957)​
• Headquarters: 30 Avenue Montaigne, Paris​
• Official website: https://www.dior.com
• Current Perfume Creation Director: Francis Kurkdjian (appointed in October 2021)
• Parent company: LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton​

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The Founder and the Brand’s Origins

A Sensibility That Blossomed in a Normandy Garden

Christian Dior was born on January 21, 1905, in Granville, a seaside town in Normandy in northern France. His father, Maurice, was a businessman who had prospered in fertilizer manufacturing. He and Christian’s mother, Madeleine, née Martin, had five children, of whom Christian was the second.

The family’s home, called Les Rhumbs, stood on a cliff overlooking the English Channel. Christian later recalled it in his autobiography as follows.​

“My childhood home was ugly, like all Anglo-Norman houses of the late nineteenth century. Yet I have the tenderest and most wonderful memories of it. My life and my style owe almost everything to that place and its architecture.”
— Christian Dior, from his autobiography Christian Dior & I

It was the garden, to which his mother Madeleine devoted her passion, that nurtured young Christian’s sensibility in this house. Later described by his youngest sister Catherine as “an outstanding botanist,” their mother created an English-style garden and cultivated rare plants and roses despite the harsh, wind-battered seaside setting. Christian is said to have learned the flowers’ Latin names, made herbariums, and spent hours in the rose garden. In later life, he described a dream in these words.

“Last night, in a dream, I became a little boy again and returned to Granville with my mother. […] Together we went out beyond the exit. Toward my roses, toward all the scents of flowers, toward the women of my enchanted garden.”
— Christian Dior​

Madeleine is also said to have entrusted ten-year-old Christian with designing a section of the garden. This was his first experience of design.​

From the Art World into Darker Times

The family began living in Paris around 1910. His parents wanted Christian to become a diplomat, but his interests lay in art. While studying political science at Sciences Po, he reportedly sold fashion sketches outside his home for ten centimes each, approximately two dollars in today’s money.

In 1928, with financial support from his father, he opened a small art gallery. Handling works by Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, and others, he developed close relationships with artists. But the Great Depression, triggered by the Wall Street crash of 1929, struck the family hard. His father’s business failed, Madeleine died in 1931, and the gallery was forced to close.

Dior began selling fashion sketches to make a living, and in 1935 obtained work as an illustrator for Figaro Illustré. In 1938, he was hired as an assistant designer by Swiss-born couturier Robert Piguet, taking his first steps into the fashion world.

The Shadow of War, and a Fortune-Teller of Destiny

During World War II, after being conscripted in southern France, Dior returned to Paris in 1941 and worked as a designer at Lucien Lelong’s house. Meanwhile, his youngest sister Catherine, twelve years his junior, joined the French Resistance and gathered intelligence for the Allies under the code name Caro.

In July 1944, Catherine’s network was infiltrated, and she was arrested by the Gestapo. Sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp, she spent at least ten months amid hunger, disease, and violence. Christian sought help from diplomats and even fortune-tellers in his search for her. In May 1945, Catherine returned to Paris after narrowly escaping a Nazi death march as Allied forces approached. Waiting at the station, Christian is said to have barely recognized his shaven-headed, emaciated sister.

An indispensable figure in any account of Dior’s life deserves mention here: the fortune-teller Madame Delahaye. Since first encountering a fortune-teller at the age of fourteen, Dior had believed throughout his life in the guidance of destiny. Fellow designer Pierre Cardin later testified:

“He did nothing without his fortune-teller. Literally nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing.”
— Pierre Cardin​

For at least a year, Madame Delahaye insisted that Catherine would return alive from the concentration camp, and she did. Thereafter, Dior consulted her on every major decision.​

The Birth of the House of Dior

After the war, textile magnate Marcel Boussac approached Dior. Initially, he invited him to help revive the existing brand Philippe et Gaston. Dior declined, wishing instead to establish a new house under his own name. When he consulted Madame Delahaye, she is said to have instructed him as follows.​

“You must create the house of Christian Dior, whatever the conditions.”
— Madame Delahaye​

On October 8, 1946, Christian Dior was formally established as a partnership between Boussac and Dior. The house at 30 Avenue Montaigne began with 85 employees, 60 seamstresses, and four models.

The New Look and the First Perfume

On February 12, 1947, Dior presented his first collection in the salons at 30 Avenue Montaigne. Called Corolle, meaning a flower’s crown of petals, the collection redefined the female silhouette with a cinched waist, soft shoulders, and generous skirts extending below the knee. Harper’s Bazaar editor-in-chief Carmel Snow immediately dubbed it the New Look, heralding a revolution in fashion. Dior himself described it in these words.

“I have designed flower women”
— Christian Dior​

Alongside this collection, Dior’s first perfume was also being developed. He appointed his childhood friend Serge Heftler-Louiche as director of Parfums Christian Dior and established the perfume division in March 1947. When commissioning perfumers Paul Vacher and Jean Carles, Dior gave them just one instruction.​

“Make me a perfume that smells like love”
— Christian Dior

The result was Miss Dior. This floral chypre, a fragrance family based on flowers and oakmoss, was accented with leather and galbanum. Sprayed lavishly throughout the salons on the day of the collection, it became the scent of the New Look.

A beautiful coincidence lies behind its name. When Catherine visited the atelier, Dior’s muse Mitzah Bricard exclaimed, “Oh, here is Miss Dior!” At that moment, Dior decided on the perfume’s name. A tribute to his flower-loving sister, a heroine of the Resistance, was forever inscribed in the house’s first fragrance.

Dior himself later wrote:

“For four years, we worked and searched like alchemists seeking the philosopher’s stone… and at last Miss Dior was born.”
— Christian Dior​

A Lifetime in Pursuit of Gardens

After achieving success, Dior continued to seek places to escape the bustle of Paris. Around 1948, he purchased Le Moulin du Coudret, a thirteenth-century watermill in Milly-la-Forêt outside Paris, and created a rustic garden reminiscent of his childhood garden in Normandy.

In 1951, he also purchased the Château de La Colle Noire in Montauroux, near Grasse. Under the southern French sun, he planted Centifolia roses, jasmine grandiflorum, and lavender on a large scale across an estate of more than fifty hectares. For him, it was a place to “rediscover, under a different climate, the safe garden that had sheltered my childhood.” He wrote his autobiography Dior by Dior here and entertained friends such as Marc Chagall.

But on October 23, 1957, Dior died suddenly of a heart attack while taking a restorative holiday in Montecatini, Italy. He was fifty-two. Madame Delahaye had repeatedly warned him not to make the trip, but he is said to have disregarded his fortune-teller’s advice on this occasion alone. At least 2,000 people attended his funeral at the Madeleine church in Paris.

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The Brand’s Commitments

The Philosophy of the Couturier-Perfumer

For Dior, perfume was inseparable from fashion. Saying, “I feel that I am a perfumer as much as a couturier,” he aspired to construct fragrances with the same precision and haute couture excellence as his dresses.​

“Perfume is an indispensable complement to a woman’s personality, the final finishing touch to a dress.”
— Christian Dior​

“A woman’s perfume tells more about her than her handwriting.”
— Christian Dior​

This idea of total beauty began with Miss Dior in 1947 and expanded into lipstick and skincare.​

A Deep Love of Flowers: The Bond with Grasse

At the foundation of Dior’s perfumes lies a profound attachment to flowers cultivated since childhood. For every collection, he wore a sprig of lily-of-the-valley in his buttonhole and had lily-of-the-valley sewn into the hems of dresses as a good-luck charm.

Today, Parfums Christian Dior maintains close ties with the Grasse region in southern France. Domaine de Manon, a flower farm in Grasse run by fourth-generation grower Carole Biancalana, cultivates its flowers organically and supplies Centifolia roses (May roses), jasmine grandiflorum, and tuberose exclusively to Dior.

The scale is astonishing. Producing one kilogram of jasmine absolute requires 600 kilograms of jasmine, fully six million flowers, and a day’s harvest yields enough essence for only a single bottle of perfume. Handpicked every morning from six until noon between August and October, the flowers are immediately transported to the extraction factory.​

Parfums Christian Dior’s repurchase of the Château de La Colle Noire in 2013, followed by the completion of its restoration in 2016, symbolized the brand’s recovery of its founder’s spiritual home. Grasse is also home to Les Fontaines Parfumées, a fragrance design center shared by Dior and Louis Vuitton.

The Evolution of Bottle Design

Dior’s perfume bottles mirror the couturier’s aesthetic sensibility. The first Miss Dior was sold in a transparent glass amphora bottle, shaped like an ancient Greek vessel. Designer Guéry-Colas drew inspiration from the New Look silhouette and ancient Greek amphorae, creating the bottle in Baccarat crystal.

In 1950, a rectangular bottle tailored like a suit appeared to accompany the Vertical collection. Its embossed houndstooth pattern and ribbon established the iconic Miss Dior design that continues today.

J’Adore’s teardrop-shaped bottle was designed by jewelry and furniture artist Hervé Van der Straeten. Evoking the female silhouette, it was intended to be “an object like a talisman that fits into the hand applying the fragrance.”

Poison’s bottle is a deep amethyst-colored apple, inspired by forbidden fruit, with a gold neck and crystal stopper.​

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The Perfume Lineup

Dior’s perfume history can broadly be divided into the masterpieces of the founder’s era, the innovative hits from the 1980s onward, and the contemporary collections.

Masterpieces of the Founder’s Era: Collaboration with Roudnitska

Following the success of Miss Dior in 1947, Dior developed a long-term collaboration with the brilliant perfumer Edmond Roudnitska (1905–1996). Roudnitska created the following masterpieces for Dior.​

• Diorama (1949) was the house’s second perfume and the beginning of Edmond Roudnitska‘s long collaboration with Dior. This chypre balances abundant flowers against sharp spices in a composition as precisely worked as a couture dress. In the current Dioriginals version, a large bouquet including jasmine and tuberose rests on a mossy base, with green galbanum sharpening its outline. For the 2026 restoration, Kurkdjian focused on the radiance of the original jasmine, bringing back the flower’s brightness to recover a character that had changed over time.
• Eau Fraîche (1955), worn by Christian Dior himself, brings citrus and chypre together. The current Dioriginals version evokes the refreshment of plunging into cold water on a hot summer’s day. Basil and tarragon support the brightness of lemon, while vetiver adds depth. Rather than foregrounding a light floral effect alone, the composition preserves the energy of citrus and the distinctiveness of herbs. In restoring it for Dioriginals, Kurkdjian removed a soapy element found in later formulas to clarify that citrus-and-herb combination again.
• Diorissimo (1956) — A masterpiece recreating lily-of-the-valley, or muguet, Dior’s lucky flower. Because essential oil cannot be extracted from lily-of-the-valley, Roudnitska used the synthetic aroma ingredient hydroxycitronellal to reconstruct its scent brilliantly. He is said to have planted lily-of-the-valley in his own garden and spent hours smelling it. It is also known as a favorite fragrance of Princess Diana.
• Eau Sauvage (1966) — Dior’s first men’s fragrance. An innovative work that made the first substantial use of the synthetic aroma ingredient Hedione (methyl dihydrojasmonate), it brought a radiant effect to a citrus-herb-jasmine structure. According to an anecdote about the name’s origin, Dior was inspired when his friend Percy Savage arrived late and the butler announced “Monsieur Sauvage.”
• Diorella (1972) was conceived as the feminine counterpart to Eau Sauvage, expressing freedom, independence, and youth. The current Dioriginals version moves from a distinctive cumin opening through jasmine and violet softened by a peach nuance, then into the woody depths of vetiver and oakmoss. Instead of letting flowers and fruit settle into sweetness alone, this chypre retains the character of spice and the depth of moss. For the 2026 restoration, Kurkdjian brought back an apricot-like fruitiness, seeking to recover the original interplay of flowers and fruit rather than adapt it to a new fashion.

Dioriginals is a collection in which Francis Kurkdjian restores historical fragrances including Diorama, Eau Fraîche, and Diorella. He compares the work to recovering the lustre and colours of a painting. He recreated historical formulas as points of comparison, then reconstructed their scents using ingredients permitted today. The aim is to preserve each original’s olfactory identity, rather than simply reuse exactly the same materials.

In approximately sixteen years, from 1947 to 1963, Dior released only five fragrances. This suggests a determination to polish each one to perfection.​

A Turning Point from the 1980s Onward: Poison and Fahrenheit

• Poison (1985) — A blockbuster introduced by Parfums Christian Dior president Maurice Roger to make a breakthrough in the American market. After approximately 800 trial fragrances, perfumer Edouard Fléchier’s creation was selected. To challenge Yves Saint Laurent’s Opium, it deliberately adopted the provocative name Poison, generating considerable debate and attention. With a complex swirl of notes including wild berries, tuberose, and sandalwood, it is a powerful scent emblematic of the 1980s.​
• Fahrenheit (1988) — A men’s fragrance by perfumer Jean-Louis Sieuzac. An innovative composition that boldly used violet in men’s perfumery, it sold 1.4 million bottles in Europe alone during its first three months, surpassing Poison’s record of 1.2 million. Its first commercial was directed by Ridley Scott.​
• Dune (1991) — Created by Sieuzac and others as a tribute to Dior’s birthplace, Granville, “where sea and land meet.”​

J’Adore: A Golden Dream for a New Millennium

In 1999, master perfumer Calice Becker created J’Adore. Her creative brief consisted of just one line.

“Create the scent of the new millennium”​

In the late 1990s, as anxiety about the Y2K problem spread, Becker invested the fragrance with hope and radiance rather than fear. A floral-fruity masterpiece, its complex formula uses at least eighty ingredients to scatter flowers such as jasmine, rose, and ylang-ylang in golden light. Its code name was Diana, a reference to Princess Diana’s close association with Dior.

The bottle is the teardrop design by Van der Straeten discussed above. Estonian model Carmen Kass served as its first muse, followed by Charlize Theron, who was its ambassador for twenty years from 2004. In 2024, Rihanna became its new face.​

Sauvage: The World’s Best-Selling Men’s Fragrance

Introduced in 2015, Sauvage was created by Dior’s in-house perfumer François Demachy. It has no direct connection to Eau Sauvage of 1966.

“For Sauvage, I drew inspiration from vast landscapes. A place both rugged and noble. I wanted a composition that was raw yet refined, using the finest natural materials to excess.”
— François Demachy​

This powerful fresh-woody scent, built around Calabrian bergamot, Sichuan pepper, and ambroxan, became a global hit alongside an advertising campaign featuring ambassador Johnny Depp. It grew into one of the world’s best-selling fragrances across genders.

La Collection Privée: A Journey through a Couturier’s Memories

La Collection Privée Christian Dior, launched in 2004, is Dior’s niche-style perfume line. Of its initial three fragrances, Cologne Blanche and Eau Noire were composed by Francis Kurkdjian under Hedi Slimane’s artistic direction.​

La Collection Privée turns subjects associated with the house, from the colours and shapes of clothes to gardens and lucky charms, into individual fragrances. Alongside olfactory categories such as floral and woody, Les Esprits de Parfum revisits existing fragrances through different compositions. In 2010, François Demachy added a group inspired by the founder’s homes, people close to him, and memories of couture. A seaside childhood home and a woodland retreat called for different atmospheres; portraits of people and clothes required different textures and ways for the scent to unfold. The selection below includes historical releases and is not a complete list of fragrances currently on sale.

Granville took Demachy in 2010 to Dior’s childhood home in Normandy, surrounded by pine trees and overlooking the sea. At Les Rhumbs, on the clifftop, the breeze from the Channel mingles with the scent of pine. Demachy wanted an aromatic fragrance suited to this pine-covered setting, but also an especially bracing, invigorating freshness. A bright opening of lemon, thyme, and rosemary leads through resinous pine to a woody finish of pepper and sandalwood. Wind moving through the landscape and the green of pine, rather than a garden bouquet, lie at its centre.

Milly-la-Forêt evokes the watermill house where Dior withdrew from Parisian society after his shows, resting among flowers, waterways, and small pools. In 2010, Demachy sought to translate the place into a woodland walk. He wanted a cotton-soft accord and a contrast of light and shade, like a bright clearing beyond the darkness of the forest floor. Fresh musk forms the centre, enveloping jasmine, orange blossom, and iris. A lingering impression of sandalwood and undergrowth completes this portrait of repose among trees.

La Colle Noire was created in 2016 by bringing together the founder’s southern French garden and the May rose of Grasse. The restored château reopened on May 9 that year, and the roses Dior loved were planted there again. Demachy chose a rich, expressive Centifolia rose absolute as the fragrance’s centre. He wanted to draw out its strength and spicy character without excessive sweetness, conveying its vivid beauty under the southern French sun. Spices, woods, amber, and musk surround the rose; in the current fragrance, patchouli also provides a background that defines the flower’s contours.

New Look 1947 translates Dior’s first couture show of 1947 into a floral composition created by Demachy in 2010. His starting point was the movement of a full skirt spreading from a tightly drawn waist. Rose and jasmine opening out suggest the spread of fabric, while tuberose gives the composition a lively, turning motion. Powdery iris joins the bouquet before the warmth of benzoin and vanilla. Rather than merely borrowing the clothes’ name, it expresses their contrast between a close-fitting waist and generous volume through flowers. It is a separate creation from the later New Look.

Mitzah is Demachy’s 2010 olfactory portrait of Dior’s muse and adviser Mitzah Bricard. He focused on two aspects of her character: a powerful, feline femininity and an inner spirituality. Amber and spices express the former, generous frankincense the latter, combining sensuality with an enigmatic stillness. Cinnamon warms the rose, while patchouli and frankincense support an amber richness suggesting labdanum, vanilla, and honey. The tribute gives different scents a role in expressing the qualities Demachy perceived in her.

Dioriviera grew from an idea Kurkdjian encountered in southern France and developed in Paris. Its centre is the contrast between soft rose and green fig. The fruity-floral composition evokes the Riviera in May, with roses in bloom and warm air passing through fig leaves. Although it portrays a summer landscape, Dior presents it as a fragrance to wear throughout the year.

Bois Talisman began with two creators’ good-luck rituals. Christian Dior would hide a small piece of wood in his clothes; Kurkdjian carries a sugar cube in his jacket. Those pieces of wood and sugar become a pairing of cedar and vanilla. Cedar also suggests the pencil used to sketch a design, while vanilla appears in different forms: an infusion, a CO₂ extract, and vanillin. Materials obtained through different extraction processes are layered with an aroma molecule, giving this woody fragrance a sweetness that ranges from soft to forceful.

Rose Star brings together Dior’s beloved rose and his lucky star. Kurkdjian imagined different facets of rose as the five points of a star. Using Centifolia rose absolute and Damask rose essence, he distinguishes bright citrus and fruit facets, the spice of Sichuan pepper, and the rounded qualities of honey and musk. Impressions of lychee, raspberry, and pear emerge within the flower’s scent; this does not mean that all those fruits were used as raw ingredients.

New Look turns directly to clothing. Rather than reproduce the garments of 1947 literally in scent, Kurkdjian sought to translate their boldness into a contemporary composition. He describes the New Look as a state of mind and a way of seeing and reinterpreting the world. Abundant aldehydic brightness meets frankincense before expanding into amber. This is a different fragrance from New Look 1947, discussed above.

Cuir Saddle takes its inspiration from the Saddle bag, carried close to the body. Kurkdjian focused on soft leather that touches the skin and seems to become part of it, rather than a rough, smoky leather. White flowers and light woody notes mingle with the leather accord against a background that includes cedar. The relationship between the bag’s shape and the body becomes a leather scent that settles close to the skin.

The Francis Kurkdjian Era

In October 2021, Francis Kurkdjian became Perfume Creation Director, opening a new chapter for Dior fragrances. After his appointment, he explored the “true history” of Miss Dior by working with Frédéric Bourdelier, the head of Dior’s archives, to contact suppliers of ingredients used in 1947. They obtained small quantities, no more than 100 grams each, of historical ingredients no longer in production to decipher the original formula.

Kurkdjian compared perfume creation to literature in these words.

“You are a writer. Every good book has vocabulary and grammar, in other words, a style. Perfume works in exactly the same way.”
— Francis Kurkdjian​

For L’Or de J’Adore, a new interpretation of J’Adore, he sought the essence of a complex formula containing at least eighty ingredients by asking, “If we heated the formula, what would remain? What is the heart of J’Adore?” He is said to have removed impurities as if refining gold.

Les Esprits de Parfum: Choosing the Heart of a Classic Anew

Les Esprits de Parfum reworks classics from La Collection Privée as concentrated extraits. Kurkdjian explains that he achieves intensity by paring back and simplifying. Rather than increasing every ingredient uniformly, he chooses what to keep at the centre and which contrasts to heighten. Those decisions produce compositions distinct from the eaux de parfum that bear the same names.

The name held a long-standing fascination for Kurkdjian. He had liked the expression Esprit de Parfum since childhood and hoped to use it for his own brand, before discovering that Dior held the rights to it. After joining Dior, reviving the name became one of his wishes. For him, esprit also connects to the spirit of Christian Dior, who was deeply involved in the creation of the house’s perfumes.

His first five selections had their own logic. He considered Gris Dior, Lucky, and Rouge Trafalgar a couture collection, while Oud Ispahan and Ambre Nuit were the two inspired by the Middle East. Kurkdjian also spoke of part of his family’s origins in Iran, linking them to the name Ispahan and to Damask rose. The house’s clothes and colours meet the perfumer’s own roots in the story behind these five choices.

Gris Dior eau de parfum forms a multifaceted chypre from citrus, rose, violet, and oakmoss. In the Esprit, the darker aspects of wood deepen, with Atlas cedar and Indonesian patchouli defining its contours. An amber accord softens the forceful woods, while violet and a full-bodied Bulgarian rose remain in the floral part. Grey woven from citrus, flowers, and moss becomes a grey with more pronounced woody shadows.

That grey also recalls Granville, where Dior grew up. Kurkdjian explains that, for Dior, grey was a colour that brought other colours to life; he reinterpreted it in a darker direction. Greater concentration becomes a means of deepening tonal contrasts, rather than simply making the fragrance stronger.

Lucky eau de parfum is a bouquet in which lily-of-the-valley hides among white flowers and fresh leaves. For the Esprit, Kurkdjian says he rebuilt the formula completely, narrowing the floral focus to lily-of-the-valley and placing a dark wood accord behind it. The dark background makes the white flower appear brighter. Against the dewy freshness of the eau de parfum, a woody-leathery accord supports the Esprit’s lily-of-the-valley and intensifies the contrast between flower and wood.

Rouge Trafalgar moves from the eau de parfum’s combination of raspberry, blackcurrant leaf, patchouli, and musk towards a more direct expression of red fruit. The Esprit evokes the red of a cherry that is ripe yet still has bite. Pink pepper adds sharpness, and Turkish and Bulgarian roses give floral fullness. Rather than simply enlarging the sweetness, the composition layers vivid fruit, the stimulation of spice, and the density of rose.

Kurkdjian wanted a bright fruitiness that would awaken the senses within the collection. Recalling Dior’s enjoyment of food, he described valuing the surprise of such direct fruitiness in an elegant French perfume.

Ambre Nuit eau de parfum softens amber’s dark, animalic side with velvety Turkish rose. Where that fragrance moves between light and shade, Kurkdjian imagined a moonless night for the Esprit. Musk and spices, especially cinnamon and cardamom, surround the soft amber inherited from the original. Compared with the eau de parfum’s emphasis on the sheen of rose, the description of the Esprit centres on musk, spice, and amber.

Oud Ispahan eau de parfum closely entwines the strength of oud and the richness of Damask rose. In the Esprit, clove and cumin weave through those two central elements. The rose takes on a honeyed sweetness, surrounded by powerful oud and spices. Rather than merely increasing the intensity of wood, the composition exposes the rose’s sweetness to the spicy movement of clove and cumin, interlacing flower, wood, and spice.

Bois d’Argent presented the challenge of giving the softness of iris a denser, skin-close presence. On Dior’s product page, Kurkdjian explains that he wanted to add fullness to the fragrance’s intimate, addictive skin-on-skin character. The smooth, powdery texture of Tuscan iris meets the ambergris-like woodiness of ambroxan and the honeyed radiance of frankincense. Soft powder, dark wood, and lustrous resin create a contrast between warmth and brightness.

The name, meaning silver wood, offered another way to explore that contrast. Kurkdjian sees it as a poetic, enigmatic contradiction in which sensual wood and gleaming metal come together. To intensify their dialogue while preserving the original’s character, he developed three central elements around different facets of iris.

Jasmin des Anges eau de parfum evokes jasmine under the summer sun of southern France, with a fruity impression of honeyed apricot. In the Esprit, the setting shifts to a jasmine field at dusk. At its centre, jasmine grandiflorum has a dense, liqueur-like fruitiness, suggesting flowers still warm from the day. Keeping the flower’s brightness, the composition develops a syrupy density within it, setting the radiance of sunlight against a concentrated aromatic core.

Intriguingly, he positions iris as Dior’s “sixth flower,” following rose, jasmine, orange blossom, tuberose, and lavender.​

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Incidentally…

• Absolute faith in his fortune-teller: Dior’s collections always included thirteen looks, and pressed lily-of-the-valley flowers were sewn into the hems of every dress. Fashion-show dates were also chosen to avoid unlucky numbers.​
• Catherine’s decorations: His sister Catherine Dior received several decorations, including the Légion d’honneur, the Croix de Guerre (normally awarded only to regular soldiers), and the British royal Medal for Courage in the Cause of Freedom. Dior’s spring 2020 collection was dedicated to Catherine, and a bag was named after her code name, Caro.​
• J’Adore’s code name: During development, J’Adore’s code name was Diana, reflecting Princess Diana’s close relationship with Dior. Diorissimo was also one of her favorite perfumes.
• The Hedione revolution: Used in substantial quantities in Eau Sauvage in 1966, Hedione, a synthetic jasmine ingredient, was an innovative material that gave perfume a radiating luminosity. It would subsequently be incorporated into countless fragrances.​
• Fahrenheit’s happy accident: A legend about the origin of Fahrenheit’s distinctive gasoline-like smell tells of three perfumers throwing rejected trials into the same wastebasket, where the sun’s heat blended them into an enchanting scent. In reality, the effect comes from a skillful combination of violet and leather notes.​