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Francis is a fragrance legend. If you consider yourself even fleetingly a fragrance afficionado, you know his name, and if you don’t know his name, you likely you own one of his fragrances; and if you don’t own one of his fragrances, you’ve worn one of his fragrances, and if you’ve never worn one of his fragrances, you are not a fragrance afficionado.

Quite simply, Francis is one of the greatest noses of our time. He has created some of the most iconic scents to have ever caressed women’s wrists, or spritzed men’s necks. Aged 26, Francis created Le Male for Jean Paul Gaultier, a scent that became so ubiquitous it may be identified on passing whiff by even the most indelicately-sensed souls. He went on to create perfumes for fashion houses including Yves Saint Laurent, Versace, Armani and of course, Dior. After forming his own fragrance house – Maison Francis Kurkdjian – in 2009, iconic fragrances all his own, such as the sweet heaven scent, Baccarat Rouge 540, or his stunning Oud moods, secured his name squarely in the vernacular of serious fragrance folk everywhere.

And now, almost 20 years after creating his first perfume for Dior, and almost 80 years after Christian Dior dreamed up the fragrance in tribute to his sister, French resistance fighter Catherine Dior, Francis has reimagined the iconic Miss Dior.

WILLIAM BUCKLEY: Hello, Francis, how are you?

FRANCIS KURKDJIAN: I’m fine, hello. Good morning.

WB: I think this is the fourth time we’ve interviewed each other over the years.

Francis: Yeah.

WB: And now with Miss Dior, tell me how that process started.

FK: I had many projects that I was working on, but I knew that Miss Dior was down the road for 2024. I went back to the archives and found lots of formulas of Miss Dior including the original from 1947. We still sell it, but the formula has changed hands over almost 80 years. It was twisted by different perfumiers which had been documented, but finding the original in the archive was very interesting.

I reconnected as close as I could from the original formula ingredients and from that, I learned two things: the first was that the Miss Dior 1947 original we sell today is not so far from what was created in 1947. Secondly, I noticed that the 1947 version was kind of catching up with the air du temps, it was kind of a quintessence in a way of the olfactory trend of the time. So very cheap, very woody and mossy with lots of jasmine, lavender notes. So, there was a kind of something very trendy. I’m not sure that was a word people were using then, but if we have to put it in perspective, that would be the thing.

What is interesting also is how Christian Dior and his team at the time who worked on the perfume describe the idea of Miss Dior, which was to truly catch the spirit of youth. And this is what I tried to translate for 2024, that Miss Dior is always that kind of young, girly Dior Miss so how can we update that state of mind today? It’s a very simple, efficient story because this is a real story.

WB: How do you go about reinterpreting the youth factor for 2024?

FK: The thing is youth today is about sparkle.

WB: Oh, I feel so blessed.

FK: So, I’m still looking for my words. It was along the lines of: Miss Dior was born from those nights in Provence where the green jasmines talks to the soul of the earth and the night and the stars. [Note: the sentence is: Alive with fireflies, where young jasmine plays a descant to the melody of the night and the land.] And I thought that the idea of going back to this sentence but making a huge update from 1946 or 47. It was the best catch to give back Miss Dior a kind of contemporary identity.

WB: How beautiful.

FK: And when you get that, the job is done, basically. It’s just about: how do you articulate the jasmines and the land? What shapes do you give to the perfume? J’adore is a floral bouquet. J’adore is all about flowers. Miss Dior is a combination of flowers and wood. And when you read Dior’s sentence, when he speaks about the green jasmine playing with the melody of the night and the land and the soil, basically, it’s about the earth, there’s earthiness, so you could translate the earthiness as the woody part of the sand. And the jasmine, of course, is jasmine. So, how to make it contemporary?

What you see with fragrances right now for young people is the idea of the playfulness. Very often, it’s translated with Gucci notes.

So, how can you come up with a fruity jasmine perfume, like to blend jasmine and the fruit and to tie it up this accord with something woodier? It looks very simple but it was a nightmare to create. It was very complex.

WB: Why?
FK: Because to find the exact story and to find the… J’adore was kind of easy because it’s a story of J’adore, I knew the story of J’adore from behind the scenes at the time. Miss Dior was more difficult because, first of all, it’s a very old sand, 75, almost 80 years old sand, which is not so easy in a way to appreciate, because something that was created 80 years ago, sometimes it’s very difficult to appreciate in a way because you have to be in the mood of 1947, which is not so easy. And also there are so many variations of Miss Dior that have been done. But the idea was really to find the right signature that will anchor the story of Miss Dior for the next 10, 25 years in a way. It was kind of challenging, I have to say.

WB: Challenging in terms of finding the right ingredients, notes or balance of ingredients?

FK: Finding the right story. Because I had two choices. Am I going to be inspired from the 1947 set and try to make a twist? If I had to make a parallel it would be when you look at how Maria Grazia reinterpreted the bar suit. Should the starting point be the smell itself or the sentence? And if I go back to the sentence, how should I rearrange the whole story to make it contemporary? It was a back and forth and I tried and I failed and it was kind of a pretty long… It took me quite a while to be confident and happy with the first accord. I did many different variations. I did many different directions, basically.

WB: What was the first accord?

FK: It’s trash! It went to trash. They all went to trash for quite a while. Because it was either too masculine or too old-fashioned or too old school. I went through very different stages before I decided to stick to the story of the sentence which to me, is basically the founding act. And I really was wiser not to look back to the smell, but to look back at the reason why it smells like that. And I think the sentence from Mr Dior is more, in a way, efficient. I believe this is what he told his perfumier back then to create.

WB: When I was a teenager, there was a big ocean-type wave of perfume. There was Polo Sport, Acqua Di Gio, the marine notes remind me of my youth, but they wouldn’t have reminded someone of youth in the 1940s.

FK: There is a fragrance evolution for decades. There are trends in perfumes, but on a much longer pace than what we have in fashion. And I’m not so sure that fashion changes every six months, every year on season. But I’m not so sure that over a decade, when you think about the 80s, 90s or the 70s in terms of fashion, you have more or less a silhouette, a kinder look. In perfume, it works the same. We have a feeling of what the 80s used to smell like or what the 90s used to smell like. And you mentioned the marine and aquatic notes. To me, the 90s was about fresh and clean. Fresh and clean at the extreme of the spectrum is about marine. The extreme of freshness can be seen marine and aquatic.
This is because it’s a post-AIDS generation, right after AIDS, the peak of AIDS in a way, started with CK One on one side. Then in terms of fresh, floral, clean, we had J’adore in the late 90s. Since then, we can see that the trails and the sillage are bolder and bolder. Today, if I were to speak about what would be left from the 2010s and 20s, it’s about that idea of fruitiness. There is a soft… It bounces between fruity, sparkle, creamy, yummy and gourmand. It’s the idea of something that appeals almost to the… There is something tasteful about perfumes right now. Edible. I think the edible is something that we see. It’s the trademark of our generation.

WB: Tell me what are some of the most valuable things you’ve learned about creating a fragrance during your career and how did those inform this creation?

FK: A great story makes a great perfume. That’s the first thing. And if your story is weak, it’s very hard to create a great scent with a poor story. And that works every single time I work. Ten or 15, or even 20 years ago, I was maybe not so sure about that, but today, I
know that I have the technique. But if my story is not good, and if the pitch basically is not strong enough, for me it’s almost impossible
to create a strong perfume. That was the main lesson that I’ve learned.

WB: Do you think your Middle Eastern heritage has any impact on the fragrances that you produce, or do you feel like they’re more of a product of you as a Parisian?

FK: I can tell by my accent that I am very French. I feel very French. But to jump on what you just said, I think because of my education and my family roots, I have a capacity to adapt very well to the environment I am in. Meaning when I go to the Middle East, it’s very diverse, because if you go to Lebanon or Jordan, or if you go to the Gulf countries, it’s a different spirit, different state of mind, you know, yet I
think I have a kind of a capacity to adapt.

WB: When you’re creating a perfume like Miss Dior, are you conscious of creating for people across different cultures?

FK: Yes, yes. Always. I always had in mind that. And even before going to Dior, I always had in mind that when I create a perfume,
speak to the world. Even though I want this perfume to have its own identity and to be inspired by a brand or by the story I’m trying
to tell, I always had the feeling that we need to speak to as much as possible. That, to me, is important.

WB: Francis, thank you so much. It was a pleasure to see you again.

FK: Thank you, William. Thank you. Bye-bye.