Francis Kurkdjian Turns Dior's 'New Look' Into a Perfume
Christian Dior put forth a radical proposal in his very first collection: The French designer, now a household name, asked women to reject the boxy, utilitarian clothing they had embraced as a sartorial show of solidarity during the second World War.
Instead, Dior proposed the New Look, a romantic silhouette that featured rounded shoulders, cinched waists, and full, billowing skirts. In the wake of fabric shortages caused by the war, the New Look wasn't just a fresh, fanciful way of dressing — it was an optimistic outlook on post-war life.
77 years after Dior's New Look first debuted, the house is translating its legacy into a fragrance named after the silhouette. "The New Look is a state of mind," says Francis Kurkdjian, Dior's perfume creation director and the nose behind its latest scent. "It provides a lens for observing and reinterpreting the world. This spirit has crossed time... today, it allows me to create new fragrances for Dior."
New Look, available to purchase online, reinterprets amber, tempering its richness with an unexpected burst of fizzy freshness. Aldehydes, a class of synthetic perfume ingredients that many describe as soapy and sparkling, brighten up the perfume's pairing of amber and incense, a duo that creates a deep, toasted effect.
Simultaneously warm and cold, the fragrance feels like a dusty beam of projector light piercing through darkness, an image that nicely encapsulates what Dior's New Look was all about: the silhouette symbolized hope in a post-war world.
Much like its inspiration, New Look is an audacious perfume (it's certainly not a crowd-pleasing vanilla gourmand or floral musk). That said, anyone can pull it off — it's just a matter of attitude. "Monsieur Dior said that all the women of the world were his models," Kurkdjian says. "I have the same philosophy for my perfume, extending to men as well. It’s about the feeling and the choice of the wearer."
