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Francis Kurkdjian was there when Calice Becker created Dior’s J’adore eau de parfum in 1999. He was a 30-year-old perfumer — with a smash-hit already under his belt in Jean Paul Gaultier’s Le Male — and they were sharing the same office at fragrance supplier Quest in New York (bought by Swiss manufacturer Givaudan in 2006).
“I had my eyes wide open. I had never seen the creation of a great floral fragrance,” Kurkdjian recalls. Twenty-five years later, he is the one at the helm, composing his own interpretation of the staple fragrance for the luxury house.
L’Or de J’adore marks Kurkdjian’s first large-scale fragrance launch for Parfums Christian Dior since he was appointed perfume creation director for the house in October 2021, succeeding longtime perfumer François Demachy. Kurkdjian has been busy since he stepped in: he reworked Eau Noire and Cologne Blanche — two fragrances he created for Dior back in 2004 — and Bois d’Argent from the house’s La Collection Privée Christian Dior. Earlier this year, he revealed Dioriviera, also part of La Collection Privée (whose distribution is limited to around 300 Dior points of sale worldwide). Kurkdjian founded his namesake fragrance house in 2009, which became part of the LVMH empire in 2017.
The catalogue of Dior’s perfumes fill different needs, and serve different audiences, he says. “Dioriviera is an arthouse film, L’Or de J’adore is a mainstream movie,” he explains. He sees L’Or de J’adore as his “founding act for the house”. “I needed to immerse myself in what the house of Dior is about — the floral motif is essential — and J’adore was the obvious way,” Kurkdjian says.
Composition took around eight months and production about a year. “Timing in perfumery differs from fashion. In fashion, we are used to seeing a designer propose things after six months. In perfumery, it’s not possible,” he says. L’Or de J’adore is to be released on 21 August in all points of sale where Dior is distributed and comes in 50ml only at launch. It’s priced at €166 (or $170), which makes it the most premium variation of the franchise.
“J’adore is Dior’s fragrance icon. It was self-obvious for Francis Kurkdjian that his journey at Dior should start with the reinterpretation of J’adore. And, there was no better playground than the most quintessential variation of it: L’Or de J’adore,” says Véronique Courtois, CEO and president of Parfums Christian Dior who was appointed in March 2023 from Guerlain.
Parfums Christian Dior generated an estimated turnover of around €3.55 billion in 2022, according to HSBC global head of consumer and retail research Erwan Rambourg (LVMH doesn’t break down sales for individual houses). LVMH stressed Parfums Christian Dior’s “remarkable performance” in its earnings release for the first half of 2023. Fragrances are the biggest category for the house, accounting for roughly 40 per cent of Parfums Christian Dior revenue, previous president and CEO Laurent Kleitman told Vogue Business last year (with makeup accounting for 30 per cent and skincare 30 per cent). Growth is notably driven by Sauvage, which “confirmed its position as the world’s leading perfume, while the iconic women’s fragrances J’adore and Miss Dior saw continued success”, the luxury conglomerate said in the earnings release. J’adore had 1.1 per cent market share globally in prestige fragrances in 2022, according to Euromonitor. However, it’s facing competition from Chanel, the largest player in prestige fragrance in 2022, per Euromonitor.
Similar to the watch market where icons dominate, the fragrance market is led by bestselling scents. “There’s room for completely new fragrances,” says Kurkdjian, though he adds that newness comes with challenges, including finding a name that’s available and can be trademarked. On the olfactory front, he stresses the need to create a scent “resolutely different and relevant”, as a fragrance launch “is always a colossal investment for a house, no matter its size”. At his own house, Kurkdjian has created fragrances that have become icons, such as Baccarat Rouge 540, composed in 2016.
On the choice of reinterpreting an existing fragrance, HSBC’s Rambourg says: “If you are launching a brand new range, the amount of advertising and time for it to work, you might not get a great return from it. J’adore is a reference in female fragrances. Fragrances are such a saturated space that it’s probably a good idea to build on an existing success and not to reinvent the wheel completely.”
Kurkdjian describes L’Or de J’adore as a “nectar” of J’adore. “The formula of J’adore is one of the longest formulas I’ve ever seen in my career, above 90 ingredients,” Kurkdjian explains, comparing it to an impressionist painting. “It’s rarely just three brushstrokes,” he says. The idea behind L’Or de J’adore was to “keep this story and make a condensed version of it”. The bottle also got a makeover (the golden threads of the bottle’s “necklace” are gone, replaced by melted gold).
The new fragrance is designed to appeal to all markets and all generations. “J’adore is a universal franchise that talks to all the women of the world,” says Courtois.
L’Or de J’adore will live alongside J’adore eau de parfum and the variations: eau de toilette; eau de parfum infinissime; and parfum d’eau, a water-based formula free from chemical solubilisers, made using a high-pressure nano-emulsion technique introduced last year as part of the company’s innovation and sustainability agenda. In 2022, 21 per cent of Parfums Christian Dior sales were generated through refillable products and L’Or de j’adore refills will be available from March 2024.
To support the launch of L’Or de J’adore, a new visual of longstanding ambassador Charlize Theron will be released, shot by Jean Baptiste Mondino. In it, she wears a creation by Dior women’s artistic director Maria Grazia Chiuri. “Charlize Theron has been J’adore’s ambassador for almost 20 years now. Her triumphant attitude, radiant beauty and inspiring message about femininity make her the perfect embodiment of the Dior woman,” says Courtois.
Dior also collaborated with Turkish American artist Refik Anadol to translate the formula into a digital painting using artificial intelligence. The “visual scent” will be displayed in J’adore pop-up locations around the world for the launch of L’Or de J’adore, and in an exhibition dedicated to J’adore at Beaux Arts de Paris from 27 September to 8 October.
Kurkdjian says he has made one famous quotation by Christian Dior his mantra: “Respect tradition and dare to be insolent. One can’t go without the other.”
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