Love brings joy, hope, and makes beautiful things happen. In the new Miss Dior Eau de Parfum, the exquisite House of Dior bottles just that enduring life-force. Its freshest iteration successfully captures the transformative effects of passion, tenderness and devotion.
In 1947, following the bleak war years, when Miss Dior was born, the long-awaited scent was like a light synonymous with happiness, the poetry and beauty of life, peace, and hope for a better future. Everyday joy was then a luxury, and, based on that impetus of bringing splendour, and awakening women to the precious beauty of life and nature around them, Monsieur Christian Dior orchestrated the creation of Miss Dior. It was the haloed designer’s triumph over the scarcity and darkness of a time ravaged by chaos. Miss Dior was Monsieur Dior’s bugle call to say, “wake up and appreciate…Everything is precious, everything counts.”
As the world turns, in amidst a different time of uncertainty, Miss Dior, confident and triumphant, shining brighter than ever, asserts with a new empowered joyful effervescence that’s infectious and addictive. True joy is the essence of Miss Dior – happiness no matter the circumstances. The crux of Miss Dior is that there is always something to celebrate and to be grateful for.
A New Scent-sation
The new Miss Dior Eau de Parfum is a fragrant feat, a scent reinvention, made possible by a spectacular ocean of multi-coloured petals. Putting on the scent is like slipping into a shimmering new “Millefiori” – a luminous sheath weaved in a thousand layers of fresh flowers, petal-light and softly caressing.
Composed by Dior’s Perfumer-Creator François Demachy, it still honours Roses, its cult signature note, but not just any rose, the Sweet Love rose in particular, which he discovered while on a walk in Grasse in Spring last year, during a time of lock-down. He was strolling with none other than Carole Biancalana, a long-term producer of Centifolia Rose for the House of Dior. That was when Monsieur Demachy chanced upon a rose unknown to him in the former’s garden, a potent rose with a vivid bouquet, at once fruity, crisp, and sharp, with a rich, velvety accord all round. One whiff and for him, its notes conjured the vision of a woman with incredible facets of strength and finesse, and he thought of love, because the spirit of love is both strong and tender.
The core of the new Miss Dior may be Sweet Love rose, but it is also powdered with noble Iris, and spiked with sexy Peony, its sweetness further balanced with the verdant bouquet of mysterious forest undergrowth.
Says Dior’s Perfumer-Creator Demachy, “The Sweet Love rose, whose name suits it so well, was a discovery for me. First of all I thought it looked particularly beautiful with its generous petals in a beautiful, iridescent, pale, pearly pink. Then its perfume took me by surprise. What a spirit, what an enveloping and exuberant power with its unexpected, lively, fruity-sweet touches. It was the creative starting point for this new Eau de Parfum. I wanted to surround it with flowers and thereby obtain a bouquet that was both vivid and elegant, sensual yet weightless.”
Wake Up to Life
Miss Dior is a new sensation in many other ways too. Putting it on, you are awakened with the expectant emotions of hope, at first softly stirring, and as the fragrance develops, blossoms fully into a mesmerising burst of joyful animation, like the dazzle of a thousand dew drops on petals touched by sunlight. By then your olfactory senses are heightened and all-ready to take in all the other fragrant nuances, as on a walk through a flowered garden or wild forest.
You start to pick up the honey, peppery notes of Centifolia Rose, also a key, if lower-key ingredient. Then you gather in the distinctive green note of Lily of the valley, after that also unmistakable Peony and subtle Iris, both newcomers to the Miss Dior flower symphony.
In a beautiful, caressing finale, cocoon-like Musks tuck in the scent, offering their imprint for the long haul. With them, touches of Papua Vanilla mingle with hints of Benzoin and Tonka bean. All this sweetness finally comes to meet a comforting Sandalwood, which envelops the base, making all the other notes shine ever so subtly, without impeding them.
Unparalleled Couture
It is also the House of Dior’s way that all pursuits, no matter how simple, should be carried out with a heart and air of utmost sophistication.
Miss Dior’s iconic quilt-bevelled solid rectangular flagon is freshly adorned with a brand-new Couture bow, a few centimetres of absolute luxury tied at the neck of the legendary bottle, a miniature marvel strewn with finely woven flowers, making Miss Dior ever-more sophisticated. In this way, the new Miss Dior Eau de Parfum showcases an exceptional, colourful and pointillist bow, with a random flowering pattern that makes each of them absolutely unique. This artisanal touch is made possible with the collaboration of Julien Faure, who hails from five generations of ribbon makers, since 1864.
Of its desired effect, Faure says, “Using the jacquard treatment, our aim was to have an almost abstract, pointillist blossom appear on this ribbon. The result is very modern, like a spray of very fine blue, pink and yellow flowers that completely cover the ribbon.”
One can also now adorn this new hand-crafted couture bow with personalised My ABCDior charms.
And when Dior Couture’s Creative Director, Maria Grazia Chiuri imagined Miss Dior as a new dress, she and her team dreamed up a wearable garden of bright blue, fuchsia pink and sunny yellow flowers in sassily vivid shades, set on hand-pleated and creased silk Gazar, which is then overdyed in a palette of colours from nude tones to warm grey.
For the Miss Dior dress, each flower is first hand-painted, then printed, before being traditionally embroidered using a blend of multicoloured cotton and silk threads. Aimed at accentuating the design of each bloom, this technique allows them to look even more striking and beautiful, as Nature intended. Brilliant, patient and inspired, the expert seamstresses in the Dior Couture ateliers worked for five hundred hours to make this unique dress blossom, a couture piece meant to be worn barefoot, inside or outside, like a flower, in high-luxe or natural environs.
Celluloid Colour – Miss Dior in Film
The scent, the dress, and now for the life of Miss Dior, which could not have been depicted better than by the sparkling Natalie Portman, who manifests perfectly the vision of director Manu Cossu, in a must-watch short film on the new Miss Dior.
Words do no justice. Seeing is believing. Suffice to say, bathed in sublime, warm golden light, and against breath-taking landscape, the beauty of Natalie Portman is state-of-the-art.
She makes a vast field of grass rippling in the wind her bed. She runs, shouts and laughs without restraint. She is strong-willed and confident, the heroine of her own life; feminine but assertive and free from constraints. She is the liberated Dior idol, taking action and dancing through life in a luxurious, delicious technicolour dream. She is at one with Nature, diving into an ocean of flowers, making the birds take flight with a single, magical gesture, drunk on life, eternally unafraid to love.
Images courtesy of Dior, artwork by Curatedition. All rights reserved.
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