This month (August 2024), an unique Dior ‘Amphora’ fragrance bottle arrived in Harrods. This re-creation has been made to have a good time 175 years of the home’s particular friendship with the storied London division retailer. ‘The Harrods Amphora’ (of which solely 47 have been made, costing £4,300 every) holds ‘Miss Dior Originale’, an eau de toilette by the home’s fragrance director Francis Kurkdjian, to be as shut as potential to the unique 1947 ‘Miss Dior’ perfume.
‘Miss Dior’ – and the Dior ‘Amphora’ bottle – was the primary ever fragrance and piece of design for the maison’s magnificence vary. Its launch got here alongside Christian Dior’s inaugural assortment for spring and summer time, heralding the ‘New Look’ (a time period coined by then editor-in-chief of Harpers Baazar Carmel Snow). For the couturier, fragrance was integral to the world of the free-spirited Dior girl, who was set to revolutionise the costume codes of post-war Europe. ‘A lady’s fragrance tells extra about her than her handwriting,’ he as soon as stated.
The Miss Dior amphora, created in collaboration with Harrods to mark the bottle’s a hundred and seventy fifth anniversary (2024)
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Dior)
The story behind Dior’s ‘Amphora’ fragrance bottle, an icon of mid-century design
M. Dior had a deep reverence for the ladies in his life, who weren’t simply muses however pals and confidants with advanced lives. ‘Miss Dior’ was a tribute to his sister Catherine, a resistance fighter with Franco-Polish intelligence. She was captured by the Gestapo and imprisoned in Ravensbrück, till her 1945 liberation by the US Military. ‘Miss Dior’ was the nickname bestowed on the youngest Dior sibling by Mitzah Bricard, one among M.Dior’s shut advisors.
Naming magnificence merchandise and perfumes after the ladies near the home is a practice that continues to this present day: there’s the ‘Mitzah’ eyeshadow palette, for instance, and fragrances akin to 2018’s ‘Fortunate’ which pays homage to Lucie ‘Fortunate’ Daouphars. (Daouphars was Christian Dior’s favorite ‘model’, who fought for working rights within the modelling business by way of a union she began known as L’Affiliation Mutuelle des Mannequins de France).
A large ‘Miss Dior’ fragrance made in gingerbread for the Harrods vacation window show, 2022
(Picture credit score: Courtesy of Dior)
To convey ‘Miss Dior’ to life, the designer labored with the noses Paul Vacher and Jean Carles, succinctly briefing them to ‘make me a fragrance that smells like love’. The ensuing perfume was a chypre floral accord with notes of jasmine, Grasse rose absolute, and white patchouli essence. ‘It was born of these Provençal evenings full of fireflies when inexperienced jasmine serves as a counterpoint to the melody of the night time and the earth,’ M. Dior stated.
For the ‘Amphora’ bottle, Christian Dior appeared to artist Fernand Guéry-Colas, who had beforehand designed surrealist fragrance flasks for Elsa Schiaparelli. (This 1937 ‘Surprising’ bottle, made in collaboration with Leonor Fini, and the 1940 packaging for ‘Snuff Pipe’, which referenced René Magritte’s oil portray Ceci n’est pas une pipe, are two examples). Guéry-Colas took the curves of the ‘New Look’ silhouette as the place to begin for the Amphora. He additionally drew upon the strains of historical Greek vases, rendering the ultimate design in clear, Baccarat crystal.
© Distinctive editions of the Miss Dior amphora, created in collaboration with Baccarat in 1949. Clear crystal doubled with crimson, cobalt blue and opal white crystal gilded.
(Picture credit score: © Antoine Kralik for Parfums Christian Dior)
Dior’s subsequent fragrance – the gourmand ‘Diorama’ by nostril Edmond Roudnitska – went on sale in 1949, and with it, a second crystal ‘Amphora’ within the form of an obelisk. The rectangular bottle for ‘Miss Dior’, which is embossed with a houndstooth sample and topped with a bow, got here alongside two years later, reflecting M. Dior’s newest and extra angular silhouette, the ‘Vertical Line’. By then, the symbiotic relationship between the home’s clothes and perfume was solidified, because of the meticulous imaginative and prescient of its namesake. ‘The general public has little concept of the care and concern that go into researching a brand new fragrance, the design of the bottle, even the packaging,’ he remarked. ‘These occupations are so absorbing that right now I really feel as a lot a parfumier as a couturier.’
It was a miniature obelisk-shaped ‘Amphora’, nonetheless, that grew to become the cap of Dior’s first lipstick, ‘Rouge Dior’, which went on sale alongside present fragrances in 1953, completely on the 30 Avenue Montaigne boutique. This date coincides with the model’s retail growth when Harrods would change into the primary location to promote Dior outdoors of France. This new London house was chosen as a result of M. Dior’s Anglophilia. His lifelong love affair with all issues British started earlier than his profession as a couturier; he first travelled to the town as a younger man within the mid-Twenties, spending months getting acquainted with English tradition. ‘That yr in London was extra stunning than ever,’ he wrote in his diaries while reflecting on his journey. ‘I am keen on the English, dressed not solely within the tweeds which swimsuit them so effectively but in addition in these flowing clothes in delicate colors.’
It’s a sentiment captured in ‘The Harrods Amphora’. Hand blown utilizing a fancy crystal ‘overlay’ method, two layers of clear and colored crystal come collectively earlier than they’re finely polished to ‘re-reveal’ the bottle’s ‘crystalline factor’: a wealthy emerald sheen consistent with Harrods’ signature shade. Lastly, the bottom of the bottle has been engraved with an eight-pointed star, one among Christian Dior’s fortunate symbols.
The same technique was additionally used to make the latest reissues of mid-century Dior fragrance bottles: the patriotic blue, white and crimson ‘Les Amphores Tricolores’ (1949), and a copy of the ‘Diorissmo Amphora’ (1956). The latter – Baccarat crystal adorned with gilt flowers nodding to the floral notes of ‘Diorissmo’ – went on sale for £13,000. At the moment, it has a ready checklist.
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A Dior takeover at Harrods in August 2023 included an set up on the facade of the division retailer
(Picture credit score: Images by Alex Upton, courtesy of Dior)
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