Yahoo Lifestyle Perfumer Francis Kurkdjian on reinventing Dior's fragrance icons
In the late Seventies, Francis Kurkdjian tells me over coffee at Christian Dior’s beautifully preserved holiday home in Grasse, the French luxury goods tax led to designer houses bending the rules in order to avoid the 20-to-30 per cent levy on fine fragrances. “The brands of the era started to create new names (for their perfume lines): at Hermès they created Soie de Parfum: silk of perfume. At Guerlain, Parfum de Toilette. And at Dior, Esprit de Parfum.”
When Kurkdjian himself was a teenager he remembers Poison and Miss Dior – two of the most iconic scents of the time – in their Esprit de Parfum formats. Now, in his position as perfumer for the house, he’s bringing the category back, using it to show some of Dior’s prestige La Collection Privée scents in a vivid new light.
“When I joined Dior I loved the name Esprit de Parfum: Christian himself was very superstitious, so the idea of a ‘spirit’ of scent really resonates with the brand,” he says. These concentrated, ultra-refined fragrances are designed to sit at the couture end of the spectrum: the most distilled, precious format in the brand’s wide-reaching fragrance stable. “If you compare them to the jewellery world, the Esprits are the central stone in the piece,” says Kurkdjian. “They are the most straight-forward link between haute couture and perfume: Christian Dior always considered himself a couturier parfumeur, and the Esprits capture that idea.”
Selecting which of the Collection Privée scents to tackle, Kurkdjian looked to both the house’s history and his own. “I felt Lucky, Gris Dior and Rouge Trafalgar were the closest to the House of Dior. And then Ambre Nuit and Oud Ispahan spoke to me personally,” he says, with the latter being especially sentimental, as a nod to his grandparent’s Armenian roots.
Gris Dior, the core collection’s bestseller and a scent many will know well, is an olfactive ode to Christian Dior’s signature shade of grey: a colour inspired by the walls of his Granville home, and which featured across the designer’s collections. “Christian always said that when you place a colour in a grey environment, the colour really stands out. So grey is a colour that reveals all the others.”
Indeed, Gris Dior is a famously undefinable scent, and its new Esprit counterpart is no different. “The idea was to keep the spirit of the original and push the intensity for a more dramatic twist. This was a tricky one as it’s such an abstract scent: when you smell (the original), you can’t define what is inside. So I pushed a bit of every ingredient: it’s not about dimming or amplifying certain notes, but turning up the brightness of the whole accord, taking the notes to the extreme.” Indeed, it’s as though the original scent has been awakened, the petrichoric mineral quality lifted by a burst of warm light.
Lucky is Dior’s ode to lily of the valley: a floral scent with sparkling freshness and surprising sillage, named after Lucie Daouphars, muse and model to Christian himself, who affectionately nicknamed her ‘Lucky’. “In the original fragrance, the lily was almost lost amongst other flowers: in my terrace, I planted lily alongside iris, and you could no longer see my lilies. To me, the lily in the scent is lost in the same way.”
Kurkdjian decided to bring the lily back into the spotlight, cleaning up the floral bouquet and contrasting it against a woody accord. “A teacher of mine once told me: when creating a floral perfume, if you only have flowers, you don’t see the flowers. You need a contrast.”
If the original Lucky hinted at burgeoning spring stems, its Esprit counterpart is a garden in full bloom. The lily is indeed dominant, but Kurkdjian has picked out the verdant green qualities of the flower to create something sparkling and refreshing.
Next, one that may surprise the perfume purists. Rouge Trafalgar is an unashamedly fruity fragrance: an olfactive category that doesn’t always permeate the ultra-fine echelons. “Usually, fruity notes aren’t found in haute parfumerie as it’s seen as being very popular, very mainstream,” says Kurkdjian. “I decided to shake that, to embrace the fruity notes, finding an elegant accord that still captures the spirit of the original, but with a backbone of power, substance and intensity.” Imagine a summer pavlova drenched in blackcurrants, but with a grown-up twist of sharp liquor, and you’re on the right track.
Ambre Nuit marks the collection’s progression into deeper, darker scents. “I loved the name of Ambre Nuit, but when I smell (the original) I don’t get the darkness. This new fragrance is the night without a moon.” To create a deeper and darker take on the original, Kurkdjian removed the softer, brighter facets of the accord to upset the balance. “I took the formula and removed all of the light,” he says, referring to the cashmere musks in the base. The spiciness is pushed forwards, with cardamom and cinnamon amplified to intoxicating effect. Imagine a sweet vanilla dessert in a candlelit room, the cosy intoxication of a whisky by a crackling fire.
Finally, Oud Ispahan: Kurkdjian's link to the Middle East. Here, he aimed to make the Damask rose more intense. “As in Gris Dior, I wanted to push the colour, increase the vibration.” The result is a scent that feels every bit as powerful as a true-to-tradition oud, but with a modern twist. “The idea was not to mimic an existing oud perfume: it’s not a traditional iteration,” says Kurkdjian. “The idea was to make a chic interpretation with the same kind of power that people love oud for.”
For Kurkdjian, this mammoth project was a dream opportunity to delve into the house’s most complex, unique fragrances and “redefine their olfactive silhouette”. These new formulas are neither a simple amplification of the originals, nor an ephemeral twist on the accord, but rather a wholly new, enticing take on something that feels just familiar enough. Fans of the originals have a new facet of their signature fragrance to discover – perhaps the Esprits will become the night-time counterpart to their everyday spritz – while those new to the jewel in Dior’s fragrance crown have five truly special scents to delve into.
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