François Demachy, Dior Perfumer-Creator, describes making a fragrance that smells like love as a renewed challenge. He explains, ‘The composition has to be exciting and stirring, somewhat wild, and yet accessible,’ something he achieved through emphasising the power of its roses to make it sensual and suggestive. He kept the floral heart of the original fragrance intact, but played quite radically with its supporting characters, with extremely lively and exuberant notes, so that it would be instantly expressive and attractive, together with eliminating any dark, earthy notes.
In essence that means less patchouli, more fresh green notes and two potent scents of orange, a classic sweet orange, and a sultrier blood orange. And it has also been an opportunity, 70 years on, to use molecules that were unavailable back in 1947.
Demachy seeks to convey, with fragrance, the idea of a perfume that expresses a feeling of love, and shares with us his childhood memories of scent and what goes in to the process of creating an iconic fragrance.
‘For love? What wouldn’t I do? I’d do the impossible, and push back all boundaries. Like Miss Dior!’ – François Demachy
Could you tell us a bit about your creative process?
It is not a single process, and depends on the fragrance. There is not one way of doing it, and you aren’t always following the same process. You initially start with a project if there is a request submitted to you, and you start imagining and working in different directions in order to avoid saturation and open up your mind. You then need to gradually shrink the field of possibilities, and during this process, you very quickly need to hear the opinions of others to make progress. But for this particular perfume, and the direction we were following, we really had love at first sight which made it easier.
Do you have preference between reinventing an existing perfume, or starting afresh? Do you enjoy one more than the other?
My answer would be both, as it depends. To reinterpret a fragrance and work on evolving an existing one, especially a famous fragrance, it means working within constraints which can be difficult. However, from an intellectual point of view it is interesting because it is a challenge. Whereas if you have a new framework and you can be completely free from a conceptual point of view, it is much more satisfactory, but it can be difficult too as you may get lost.
Where do you find your inspiration in general, and for this fragrance?
Inspirations can come from anywhere, everywhere, and anybody. A woman, the image of a woman, cuisine, the environment, or when you meet someone. You just need to be ready for it and always be on the lookout. For instance, I pick up on specific smells, such as on the walk here of the bushes mixed with the ocean, and I may use this inspiration later. For this perfume in particular, it was inspired after a meeting with Maria Grazia Chiuri who is a woman with a perfect image of a woman. She is very inspiring herself and also with her fashion, and since Miss Dior is the perfume of couture, it has to reflect and embody the new femininity of the house today.
Speaking about the perfume, last year it was Absolutely Blooming and this year we noticed that there is the pink pepper and other new ingredients. What made you decide on these and what makes the new scent iconic and different from the previous Miss Dior?
Firstly, I would like to say that it is not a completely different perfume because we stayed within the framework of Miss Dior. Secondly, I discussed the scent with Maria Grazia Chiuri and she gave me ideas, so I decided therefore to use pink pepper instead of pepper as they are both spicy notes yet slightly different, so therefore we remained in the same spirit. By adding up all these slight differences you get a fragrance which is still in the same spirit but with a difference, so for instance here it is more contemporary, more joyful, and less conventional, like the passion of Maria Grazia Chiuri. It is graceful, but with a sparkling temper.
Fragrances always evoke emotions, so looking back at your childhood what scent do you remember?
Your senses directly link to the brain and your memories, and that is why for instance when we work on a fragrance for the summertime we incorporate notes of tanning products, the sun and wellbeing, and we use those features as we never forget the olfactory memories. My own personal early memories are of descending the mountains, or the jasmine fields I came across as a teenager.
What do you think makes a fragrance iconic and timeless?
There is no specific rule, and we try and hope for something to be iconic, but we never know until after it has been launched as there is no recipe for this. If we explore existing iconic fragrances, we can look back and see what made them iconic, but it is usually down to a series of factors, such as the history, the perfume, and bottle. For example, Chanel No5 is iconic as it has been there for some time and it represents a luxury perfume, but I am not sure that the scent would be as magnificent if you had a blind test, because it’s popularity is down to a series of different factors. The same applies to Miss Dior, a lot of perfumes revolve around the same notes, but Miss Dior has remained iconic and others have disappeared, because it is all about the combination of quality, name, bottle, and chance, as the actual fragrance is not always enough.
By Lara Mansour Sawaya
