Paradise Lost and Found: Francis Kurkdjian’s Dior inspiration

Fashion

Naturally, the expectation when meeting Francis Kurkdjian—the perfume creation director at Dior and someone who has formulated many of the most iconic fragrances of the last three decades—would be that he is media-trained to perfection. But Kurkdjian surprised me. During our conversation he spoke as if he had forgotten he was being recorded, answering questions with a directness that was instantly disarming. Nothing was performative, just a man talking about his work with the kind of honesty that most people reserve for close friends. This sort of openness is rare in any industry, but in luxury, where every word is usually weighed against quarterly earnings and brand equity, it felt almost radical. We are meeting to discuss his latest creation, Dior Paradise, which is part of the brand’s La Collection Privée line.

Its backstory has quite a poetic beginning and is rooted in some beloved trees. “The almond tree is the first tree that blossoms at the end of winter,” Kurkdjian says. “Monsieur Dior wanted to be able to see its flowers from his château.” After Dior’s death in 1957, the almond orchard at his Château de La Colle Noire home in the South of France was chopped down because maintaining it was intensive work for little reward. But the memory of those trees remained in the Maison’s archives. When Kurkdjian began searching for a story to anchor his next perfume, he asked the Dior historians to dig through the collection of 20,000 digitized patrimonial documents to help him find a starting point for the scent. “We knew because we have the garden map from back then, and we have testimonies from the gardener himself about how Monsieur Dior was in love with those trees,” the perfumer explains.

What emerged from that research was the understanding that the trees represented something profound for the founder. They were part of his attempt to recreate the childhood home he lost when his family went bankrupt in the 1930s. But the almond connection at the heart of this fragrance is not just about the orchard trees. Kurkdjian discovered something else in the archives: Dior’s cocktail recipes. “He was in love with almond syrup,” he says. “There is a drink called orgeat, an almond syrup that you use in cocktails. We have recipes of Christian Dior with this specific almond syrup.” That discovery shifted the entire project, because almond is not only a scent but also a taste and a flavor that Dior loved as a daily pleasure. And from there, a parallel to the Middle East also emerged, because Kurkdjian found his own connection to it when he realized that almond syrup reminded him of Jallab, the date and rose drink he used to enjoy in Lebanon.

Taking all of these touchpoints into consideration, the new Paradise fragrance is a creative mélange that pairs bitter almond with a cocktail of citrus notes like mandarin, orange, and lime to create something luminous and bright, with a biscuity roasted tonka bean to prolong the almond sweetness. “I wanted to give it a sensual feel with a fresh woody accord evoking the scents and warmth of Provence,” Kurkdjian explains. “Dior Paradise is as comforting as the first ray of sun emerging at the end of winter to caress your cheek.” When asked what makes this fragrance distinctive, Kurkdjian is characteristically direct. “It smells like nothing else on the market,” he says. “The uniqueness comes from the story. It’s an untold story so far. If you are true as a perfumer, you are always true to the story, because the story comes first.” That commitment to storytelling requires creative freedom, and Kurkdjian is remarkably clear about how he navigates that within a house as large as Dior. “I am free in my mind, and even in real life I feel free,” he says.

“The worst thing you can lose in life is your freedom. There is nothing more precious than freedom of speech, freedom of being who you want to be, freedom of acting, and freedom of thinking.” Before our time together ends, the topic of staying grounded in a world of constant urgency comes up, especially for someone as busy as Kurkdjian. For him it all comes down to being intentional about trying to maintain a normal life. He still takes the metro and the bus, does his own food shopping, cooks for his family, and spends time with old friends who are not in the fashion or perfume business.

And in a full-circle moment that feels somehow connected back to those almond trees at the foundation of his new fragrance, Kurkdjian says, “A tree needs to nurture its roots to grow. There is no reason why human beings should be any different.”

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