Inside the dream Dior

- Nice to meet you! - Me too. I'm very honored.

Yes!

- Thank you for your time. - Thank you.

It's so nice to finally meet you. I always just hear about you.

Now, I have a face.

Now, we have a face. And now, I feel...

I'm getting younger because

the first time I saw you in the Dior...

in the famous Dior apartment advertising.

I think it was very audacious.

Yeah.

It was unique. I still have it in my mind.

Oh, that's really nice. Thank you so much.

- I brought a few things from Paris. - Amazing.

- Of course, what I've just created. - Wow.

- First... - I haven't smelled it.

- I know. And I have a question. - Yes?

Do you have a feeling of what this new fragrance could smell like?

I would say something very clean and simple.

So, this is the one you may know. This is the eau de parfum.

It smells like home. I know this one.

So now, this is the... drum roll...

Wait, so this is it? I'm so excited.

So this is it!

Yay! This is so special that I get to smell this with you.

Merci beaucoup. Thank you.

It's very special to me as well as you can imagine.

- Oh, my gosh. It's so... -

PARIS, FRANCE 1 YEAR EARLIER

I like mornings.

It is my moment where I feel fresh, my mind is clear.

Everything flows. There is no traffic in Paris.

It's peaceful.

Even at the office, there are no meetings.

I could work from home, but I like going to the office.

I am Francis Kurkdjian, perfumer

and Perfume Creation Director at Parfums Christian Dior.

I grew up in Seine-Saint-Denis, outside of Paris.

I discovered the perfumer profession aged 14.

The job of a perfumer is to combine ingredients,

side by side, in an aesthetic balance

that corresponds to the idea in your mind.

I am working on a fragrance that is coming out in September and...

I changed tack along the way.

A new idea came to light

and I have to make some progress.

Since arriving at the House of Dior, my first major challenge

is to reinvent J'adore.

It does make my head spin.

It is Dior's iconic fragrance,

a composition that is...

unsurpassed to date.

Am I able to do better? I don't know.

I have 30 years of experience.

My career started straight out of school, in 1995,

with the creation of Le Mâle by Jean-Paul Gaultier.

I was only 25.

It catapulted me straight into the big league.

Throughout my career, I have worked for several brands,

Burberry, Saint Laurent, Guerlain, Armani, Dior,

and even founded my own label.

In 2021, I was contacted about being part of the House of Dior.

From that moment on, the idea of joining Dior never left me.

It was something very profound

and almost essential to my life.

I didn't want to be at Dior. I desired it. That is different.

From the Eiffel Tower to the Champs-Elysées,

Avenue Montaigne is lined with cars from all around,

bringing elegance from around the world to its leafy shade.

They come to entrust the art of styling

to the man who has become their most precious ally.

For these women, his name

embodies all the prestige of French haute couture,

Christian Dior.

In the spring of 1947, when Christian Dior launched his Corolle collection,

christened "New Look" by America, there was talk of revolution.

Women were rediscovering truly feminine forms.

From the moment, the House of Dior was created in 1947,

Dior swept everyone aside.

FIRST CHRISTIAN DIOR FASHION SHOW

We can consider February 12, 1947, the first Christian Dior fashion show,

as a key date in fashion history.

Nothing would ever be the same.

The years of war and depression were left behind.

Christian Dior said to women,

"Put yourself in the spotlight. Be fabulous. Be feminine."

You can really see the New Look figure,

the Corolle line.

Glamor, style,

elegance, sophistication.

His dream was to dress women from head to toe.

He also said that perfume was the final touch to an outfit,

the finishing touch.

He did not wait for Dior's reputation to take root

after three, five, ten years, as is often the case.

From the very first year, he wanted to create a fragrance.

So, in our innermost, darkest depths,

I would suggest looking at some fairly old articles,

from the 1947 to 1950 period.

What's this? It's Diorama. That's Roudnitska as well.

It's from 1949.

Wait for it. Drum roll...

- Suspense. Thank you. - It smells like Aunt Françoise.

In my family environment,

there is a special person whom I call Aunt Françoise,

who is a close friend of my mother

and worked for Christian Dior from 1955 to 1959.

She was a pattern maker in the pattern workshop,

and so, from a young age, I grew up

around Françoise's stories about Monsieur Dior.

Like a children's book. Mr. Dior drives a car,

Mr. Dior takes the elevator,

Mr. Dior perfumes the floors of Avenue Montaigne with Diorissimo.

And almost 30 or even 40 years later,

when the chance to work at Dior presented itself,

the first person I called, since my mother has passed away, was Françoise.

Beautiful. There's a harmony with Diorella later on.

It is kind of the pinnacle of femininity in the 1940s,

and today, when you smell these kinds of notes,

it could actually be completely genderless.

It could almost be masculine.

I had an idea of what Dior was like,

but from the inside, it is completely different.

Since coming here, I have immersed myself in this house,

its founder, what he said, what he wrote...

This is a letter.

It refers to a perfume, which I believe

has nothing to do with Diorissimo. Maybe it was never made.

Is this the only letter we have?

I am trying to get inside his mind.

1947 to 1957.

He died aged 52, and everything he had built,

he did it in ten years.

It's impressive. It's immense.

It is a very special journey, very special indeed.

But Diorama is magnificent.

My role as creation director is to try

to bring this past back to life without being old-fashioned.

From 1947, from 1950,

Christian Dior chose the amphora as the shape.

Indeed, it is similar to the New Look style.

With J'adore, maybe the amphora is flipped to become a droplet.

Today, when you look at the stylistic elements of J'adore,

you realize that it is close to Christian Dior's original message.

A message of enthusiasm, optimism,

and a departure from the 1990 era,

which was quite cold, somber and minimalist.

This offers something quite extravagant.

- We have this too. - What is it?

It is the storyboard by Jean-Baptiste Mondino and his team.

The golden pool.

We're in a kind of sacred temple.

And a divine being walks out of the golden pool.

I think that will surprise people.

Yes, with the foot like that...

No hair, no makeup, no stylist, little lighting.

I put others in the spotlight. I don't want to be center stage.

I prefer the shadows.

Everything is iconic with J'adore.

In 1999, I was presented with this golden bottle.

The necklace is like a Maasai necklace.

There was gold everywhere you looked.

It was so removed from the norm at that time.

I thought about the liquid, the gold...

How about a pool of gold?

I didn't think it would work at all.

But it turns out that it did.

The rocket had been launched.

One of the first campaigns I did with Mondino was

kind of an elimination of gold

and saying that let's not celebrate gold in this way where it's a god.

It's just gold. It's just metal.

There is gold in all of us, meaning we're all special.

Her presence, her blondness,

her power, that Amazonian quality,

the idea that she comes home

and abuses this luxury,

the necklace, the clothes, the shoes,

to finally feel good.

She is a woman of action

who is starting to make demands,

who doesn't need a man,

who doesn't need a car,

and who is not playing a character.

She is becoming a guide.

The J'adore woman is always in movement.

She's always moving and kind of has this feeling of,

like, moving forward.

I think deep down inside, people relate to the authenticity.

And I think that's why J'adore has been so successful.

With the bottle, Charlize, the name, the fragrance and the adverts,

all the iconic ingredients are there.

And there you have it. After 20 years, it is enshrined forever.

J'adore will outlast us.

Don't worry. You may all die,

but J'adore will always be there.

Don't put that in!

Retouching such an icon is a huge responsibility.

I clearly have an obligation to achieve results.

The first thing I want to and, in fact, must do