Exclusive installation of paper flowers in the Gardens room, which displays flower dresses alongside artworks from Monet to Marc Quinn. Photo credit: Dior
The space is covered with thousands of delicate white paper tendrils and vines draping down from overhead. Beneath them stand dresses in all inspiration of flowers: from a chiffon afternoon dress embroidered with cotton daisies to one couture cocktail dress covered in little green feather sprigs. Facing these dresses on one side of the wall, a Monet iris painting is hanging as if in conversation with the gowns.
This is the Dior Garden, one of many rooms in the 32,000-square-foot ‘Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams’ exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. Celebrating 70 years of Maison Dior, it’s a big and bold staging of the brand’s story, and underneath that, a subtle retrospective study of the business in fashion. With over 300 haute couture dresses (many from the museum’s own collection) and 700 accessories across 23 themes curated by the museum’s director Olivier Gabet and Florence Müller, curator of textile art and fashion at the Denver Art Museum, it’s a one-hour minimum walk-through show. The superlatives continue ... welcome to the largest Dior exhibition ever held, and the first in France since 1987.
New Floral Declaration
Dior Miss Dior EDP, RM595 (100ml). Photo credit: Dior
Just as the House of Dior experienced many revolutions over the seven decades, Miss Dior has simultaneously been racing ahead with its own reinventions. Since 2006, another important figure has entered the world of Miss Dior and that’s François Demachy, appointed perfumer-creator at Parfums Christian Dior, who believe that “creating a perfume is like creating a painting. Everything starts with an idea.”
Demachy’s latest reinvention of the 70-year-old Miss Dior creates an alternative vision of what Miss Dior might mean. Launched in September, the new Miss Dior is an ode to love. Portman, who has been the face of the scent since 2010, plays a Miss Dior very much in love in its new campaign. Set to the track of Sia’s “Chandelier”, the video asks, “And you, what would you do for love?” Portman says: “I would go to the end of the earth for love!” It’s a wink of sassy attitude while staying true to its elegant femininity.
Miss Dior travelling spray bottle from 1949. Photo credit: Antoine Kralik for Christian Dior Parfums
“From the moment it was created, Miss Dior was the fragrance of love, and a burst of life. This perfume was meant to embody the ideal of what a perfume should be: suggestive, mesmerising, and sensual,” says Demachy.
The result is something of a new classic. It’s still a chypre scent—with the potent notes of blood orange, mandarin, and bergamot—and the Grasse rose and Turkish Damascus rose give it a vivacious floral sensuality. It’s unmistakably Dior but in a new way.
