HOUSE OF FLOWERS
ADESIGN CODES
Dior Miss Dior Blooming Bouquet EDT, RM265 ( 50ml) & RM365 (100ml)
s Natalie Portman skirts around the iconic grey stairway reminiscent of that at Dior on Paris’s Avenue Montaigne, flowers bloom in abundance. In the buttery sunlight, the actress’s twirls open up her dress like a tulip in season. Embroidered with trillions of tiny flower buds, the dress is made ever more beautiful with her undone hair and sensual gaze. Barefoot like a pixie, with a pale pink-lily corsage around her dainty wrist, she is at one with the cascade of peonies and roses that encircle the cast-iron banisters, a nod to Christian Dior’s love of nature and flowers.
Designed by Dior artistic director Raf Simons, the dress also pays homage to Monsieur Dior’s passion: “After women, flowers are the most divine creations,” the master couturier once said. At his childhood home in Granville, Normandy, Dior used to help his mother Madeleine keep the gardens flourishing; there, roses continue to blossom today. Little wonder Dior always cited nature and art as inspiration for his beautiful designs. “My life and my style owe almost everything to its location and architecture,” he wrote of the renowned Belle Époque villa. In 1947, he debuted the New Look, a silhouette that cut an elegant slender waist and then bloomed out into a full skirt. Dior’s passion was manifested in the air itself. He had imbued the fashion show with a subtle hint of Miss Dior, his first fragrance, which reflected the burgeoning appeal of his collection.
In a post-war period of utter depression, he wanted a perfume that smelled of love. “I created Miss Dior so I could see my dresses float out of the bottle one after the other, dressing women in a trail of desire.” On that note, a chypre composed of Provençal jasmine, lush moss, and the green trail of galbanum was born. Today, T Raf Simons reanimates Monsieur Dior’s lifelong l love. At his Spring/Summer ’14 show, lianas and orchids dangled from the ceiling in rainbow rivulets. Soft pleats were folded like the petals of shy rosebuds. Upon closer inspection, exotic vines of coloured crystals encircled the models’ swan necks. All were most significant of Dior’s storied legacy, albeit with a modern twist.
Similarly, François Demarchy, the house of Dior’s resident perfumer, has done the same for Miss Dior Blooming Bouquet. “It is a silky, sculpted perfume. Not a frontal invitation, but a halo, like an aura,” describes Demarchy of this “cocoon” fragrance. Here is a scent specially created for a girl who truly rejoices in the beauty of nature. Its springtime bouquet of romantic peony and rose accords, sparkling Sicilian mandarin essence, and velvety dry-down of white musk “plays on the charm of seduction,” according to Demarchy.
LIFE AFTER LIFE
“Miss Dior speaks in subtle undertones,” Demarchy notes of the accords that are composed of flowers one can still find in Dior’s Les Rhumbs gardens. Tinged in a delicate rose hue, with an iconic Dior bow completing the flacon “tailored like a suit”, Miss Dior meets all the refined codes of the famed couture house.
Very elegant and yet a little cheeky, incredibly sensuous and a tad more playful than the original, the new fragrance beautifully reflects the various facets of a coquette, as well as the inspiring energy of nature itself. Indeed, Miss Dior today would have made Monsieur Dior proud. After all, the legend had once declared: “You can never really go wrong if you take nature as an example.” Christian Dior and his sketches The original Miss Dior flacon was designed to mirror the New Look The Miss Dior dress that Monsieur Dior designed in 1949