The Dior Chypres series ~Diorama: fragrance review

"Cabochard, Dioressence, Diorama were offerings to goddesses, not presents to women". This is how Luca Turin addressed the masterpiece by Edmond Roudnitska that came in 1949 like a luminous cognac diamond to adorn the crown of Christian Dior parfums. He couldn't have said it better.
Diorama, unlike its cohorts in divinity who have lapsed from Heaven, was recently re-issued (along with Diorling) by Roja Dove to results that do not insult its precious, beautiful visage of a classical Venus de Milo.

Luca Turin has been reported to pan the jus circulating at the Avenue Montaigne shop in comparison to the vintage -which one would assume he got procured by the miraculous and forbidable Mme Pillaud in Menton:

"It was real Diorama, a one-ounce tester, the first postwar Dior perfume, not the crap you you buy today for two hundred dollars on avenue Montaigne that bears no resemblance to the original fragrance." (Chandler Burr, "Emperor of Scent" 2003, p.19)

I have alas only dried up dregs of my glamorous, Paris-shopping grandmother's mini vial to compare to the reissued version which I sampled recently {click to learn how}, but if the reissue is any miniscule indication of the greatness of the original, then by God, I would have been blinded with awe.

According to perfumer Jean Claude Ellena, talking about Diorama :

"No perfume has ever had more complex form and formula, more feminine contours, more sensual, more carnal. It seduces us with its spicy notes: pepper, clove, cinnamon, nutmeg, cumin, the scent of skin. It is disturbing with its animalic notes: castoreum, civet, musk. All the accords and themes to follow are contained in this perfume: the wood and the violet, the plum and the peach, the jasmine and the spices"

(author's translation).

Diorama is a chypre of classical structure poised between Femme and Mitsouko and rounding out the best features of both, while it could also be argued that it contains the sperms of calm and restrained fruity exploration that will be expressed in Parfum de Thèrese and Diorella. Unfortunately for me, Parfum de Thèrese soon acquires a metallic aqueous aspect that I find disagreeable, so perhaps I might not be the best judge of such a comparison. The idea however had been suggested to me by good friend Denyse Beaulieu and I think it's worth exploring if you get the chance to have both at hand.

The bergamot top note of Diorama allied to spicy notes of nutmeg, cinnamon and cardamom recall the spice caravan that leads the camels of Eau d'Hermès, another Roudnitska creation, but also the cinnamon bite of Mitsouko that contributes to its spicy woodiness. Cumin was explored as a sweaty note addition to the re-issue of Femme (under Olivier Cresp's baguette) and contibutes a lot to its carnality, which I personally find very pleasurable. In Diorama, cumin is apparently held in check and other elements of more animalic nature are sensed in the depths of the scent, very slowly.

The plum element of Femme , a base of a methyl ionone compound, adorns the composition with a richness that greets you upon first smell along with peach aldehydes, all golden and ripe, softening the whole into a velvety sheen. It is so smooth, so buttery, you can't help stopping and inhaling deeply, admiring your own humble self even if you are feeling like hell and feel even worse.
Diorama has the rare power to obliterate anything you might project visually and transport the one who smells it into a better place, a better time. Its clear, incadescent heart of jasmine which I feel emerge after the first ten minutes projects warmly in a radius that encompasses everyone that will lean a little bit closer. It is a jasmine that is rich, ardent and indeed beautiful. Despite what notes are given, as I lean on my wrists pondering on the beauty of such a smell I perceive a clear lily of the valley note, an aroma that is usually replicated by hydroxicitronellal, as lily of the valley/muguet is a flower whose smell is elusive. (It is well known that Roudnitska grew the heady flowers to study them in order to replicate their divine smell in Diorissimo). That note gives an unexpected freshness, like the one that will surface in Diorella along with hesperidic and peachy touches later on and here marries well with jasmine and another white floral of a greener, piquant aspect.
You can't really distinguinsh when the mossy aspects of vetiver, moss and patchouli enter the scene like dramatic actors in a Shakesperean Midsummer Night's Dream, but when they do along with erotic undertones of labdanum and the leathery odour of animalic castoreum you know they will stay on the skin for hours mesmerising you.

All the themes evolve and revolve one into the other, like "a dream within a dream". You could say that Diorama was the seminal work of Roudnitska that contains his profound ideas on perfume aesthetics to be later dissected and minutely examined in his prolific career.

The lasting power is phenomenal for an eau de toilette concentration (at least on my skin) and in this regard it is excellent value for money.

Diorama, the way I perceive it, smells opulent and quite old-fashioned: the way real women smelled all those years ago, the way my glamorous grandmother smelled, when the hysteria of artificial freshness hadn't surged and people actually dressed for dinner even if by themselves at home. I know, it sounds such a weird concept to our modern ears...However if you have ever got into a satin little slipdress in cerulean blue and got the escargots and Cristalle from the fridge to celebrate by yourself, instead of munching Oreos wearing flannel bear-printed pyjamas, you know what I mean. In short, Diorama is a retrospective. But so much worth it...

Available in the classic 125 ml bottle of eau de toilette.
Boutique Dior is located at 28-30 Avenue Montaigne, 75008 Paris.
Fax number to order: 00 33 1 40 73 57 95
Also available at Le Bon Marché (in Paris) and at Harrods (at Roja Dove's Haute Parfumerie) in London.

Pic from okadi. Painting Pygmalion and Galatea by Jean-Léon Gérôme courtesy of allposters.com. Translations of JCE quote from the french by helg

Fragrant news: Guerlain Les Parisiennes additions and deductions

Isabelle Rousseau, director of public relations for Guerlain confirms that the defunct masculine scent Coriolan , a scent of juniper berry bitterness coupled with balsamic notes and an immortelle drydown, will be reissued in Les Parisiennes collection (125 ml "bee" bottles) starting from January 2008 under a new name. The bottles in Les Parisiennes normally cost 140 €. {see a list of them and reviews here}

However this signals that the recently discontinued, yet wonderful Derby {click here and scroll for review} from the same line will remain discontinued as interest will be directed to this new fragrance.

The original Coriolan can still be found cheaply in certain stock-stores and online.
Supposedly the name wasn't that popular and was in part blamed for the commercial flop of the scent. Strange, as it was inspired by the noble warrior immortalized in drama by Shakespeare and in music by Beethoven, surely popular references by themselves. Coriolan was advertised as expressing "the character of the modern day hero" and perhaps there is lack of those... The tag line read "Un parfum comme on n'en fait plus" (=a perfume like those not made anymore). I always liked the above ad: very virile, very classical.

Let us see what happens under the new name!

Pic from imagedeparfums

The Dior Chypres series ~1.the hidden force: Edmond Roudnitska

Edmond Roudnitska

Perfume Shrine embarked on a mission: to disect and discuss one of the bastions of chypre: la maison Dior in its former glory, when under the baguette of Edmond Roudnitska and Paul Vacher it produced classics that remain up there in the pantheon for all of us to worship.

Edmond Roudnitska is probably the one name you simply need to drop if you want to appear as if you have at least a passing knowledge of scent. Of course name dropping is completely ridiculous, especially when used to prove that someone knows anything about anything, but the practice does not diminish the value of this Ukranian émigré who started as an assistant to Ernest Beaux; the Russian perfumer to the czars who made the legend of Chanel parfums almost single-handedly. Did his apprenticeship serve him well? More than that.

Roudnitska became much more than an artist of high calibre in the fragrant galaxy or a point of reference. He also pondered theoretically on the subject of perfume through his prolific writing and his polemic to establish perfume creation as an art form, especially in his book “Le parfum” in the “Que sais-je?” series (now out of print), “L’ésthetique en question” and “L’intimité du parfum”. But the dialectic he inaugurated has survived in his dictum (from a speech given on 20 November 1952 in Paris):

“For it to be considered Art, smell ceases to be a sense to be satisfied to rather become a medium. Thus perfumes will be spiritual compositions and the public will be able to initiate themselves into olfactive forms”.

For him it is not the sense of smell or the materials that are important, but rather the spirit which, playing with forms, will coax the latter with the aid of the former. This point of view had been forgotten for decades when perfumes came out with the eye more on the commercial than the artistic, only to be revived when certain niche companies came into the fore dynamically. Roudnitska bases his axiom in the comparison to other art forms (as mapped out by Etienne Souriau).

“A beautiful perfume is the one which gives us a shock: a sensory one followed by a psychological one. A beautiful perfume is one with happy proportions and an original form”.

One criterion is the pre-thought-out process that precedes composition, contrasting popular myths about “happy accidents” (too much aldehydes in Chanel No.5, vanillin in Jicky producing the basic accord for Shalimar) and certainly the rumour that Jean Carles composed by instinct rather than plan. Therefore artistic perfume composition should focus in evoking odours in an abstract manner. In this he found an eminable successor in Jean Claude Ellena who composes with pen and paper at hand and not concocting alloys at some secret lab. Emphasis on the interaction of materials with one another is also highly regarded.
Additionally, perfume composition should be unique, much like a musical piece, and protected against “plagiarism”. To this he was adamant. He would be sadly disillusioned to find out that nowadays there are hundreds of fragrances that are composed with gas chromatograph and mass spectometer at the side of the unlucky recipient of a perfume brief from a big company: that is, to replicate a best-selling fragrance adding a minimal twist. This is where the education of the public comes into the fore, as well as the possibility of expression both personal and national or era-related through perfume.

Perhaps one of Roudnitska’s best known triumphs -alongside Diorissimo, the iconic lily of the valley fragrance- is the classic Rochas chypre Femme {click here for review}. In this he explored the concept of the fruity chypre with touches of aldehyde and powder rendering a fragrance at once opulent, alluring and elegant. Himself he renounced the moniker of “chypre” for it. In an article appearing in Perfumer and Flavorist magazine in December 1987, he describes Femme as

“floral, aldehydic and very fruity, with the double characteristic of woodiness and sweetness”.

This was due to the antithesis to Coty’s prototype but probably also due to a desire to differentiate from previous fruity exempla, such as Mitsouko. Roudnitska continued to produce scents for Rochas: Mouselline (formely Chiffon), Mouche, Moustache and La Rose.

But it was his meeting with Serge Heftler-Louiche, director of parfums Christian Dior that cemented his style and directed him into a lucrative business and artistic collaboration that lasted for decades and it is interesting to juxtapose the chypres he produced for them with Femme. Christian Dior opened shop in 1945 under the insistence of the businessman Marcel Boussac. A new perspective to fashion was brought with his New Look, which took women back to the era of crinolines, in a way, counter-revolutionising what Cadolle and Chanel had accomplished through the use of pliable materials that helped women become the men in their lives in all areas besides the boudoir. Dior envisioned women in more traditional roles, wasp-waisted like some Minoan goddess and with meters of skirt lengths that challenged the rationed days of the war:

"We were emerging from a period of war, uniforms, female soldiers built like boxers. I was drawing female flowers with soft shoulders, full busts, waists as slim as liana and corolla skirts".

Carmel Snow, editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar remarked:

“It's quite a revolution, dear Christian. Your dresses have such a new look”.

The year was 1947 and Dior came out with his first scent, Miss Dior, as homage to his sister. Credited to Paul Vacher, based on a formula suggested by Jean Carles and reorchastrated by Roudnitska in 1992 in extrait de parfum, it is nothing short of a classic and the introduction of a big trend in the coming years: the floral chypre; but with an animalic twist down the line, of which more later on.
But it was in 1949 that Diorama, a fruity chypre perfume, was created by Roudnitska. With it he found a balance between complexity and clear vision that captures several olfactory nuances: spicy, floral, fruity, animalic and all enrobed in a sensual feminine dress. By this time he began simplifying his palette, making stricter formulae, with a mathematical precision that abandonded notes that served merely for the pleasantry of the senses, like heavy sugary ones, to focus on more spiritual endeavours using purer, strictly “olfactory” notes that aimed at the cerebral rather than the carnal; aiming at elevating scent from the instinct of the reptile cortex into the fully developed Homo sapiens membranes. Eau d’Hermès followed in 1951, all spices galore, and Eau Fraîche for Dior in 1953, comissioned and modeled around Coty’s Cordon Vert eau de cologne (in its turn by Chypre) and by Roudnitska’s own words the only true chypre version in the market (this was in 1993).
In 1963 Paul Vacher produced another chypre in the Dior stable: this time a leathery fragrance, Diorling. With it all elements fall into place into a supreme elegance that is as buttery smooth as the fur of an alpaca coat.

Roudnitska’s most successful –commercially certainly! - scent entered the scene in 1966: Eau Sauvage. A chyprish citrus for men with the daring floral note of jasmine through the use of hedione. In this Roudnitska culminated his aesthetic odyssey of the sparseness of composition with an artistic merit that defies criticism. Diorella (1972), with its foot in the fruity tradition of Diorama, was the feminine chypre counterpart to Eau Sauvage, enigmatically relying on very few materials to give a very fresh, very young fragrance and which Roudnitska himself considered one of the best in his career. Dior Dior, a woody floral perfume, issued in 1976, never took off commercially and was destined to be discontinued till now.

Luckily Diorama and Diorling, two of the pre-eminent chypres in the Dior constellation have been re-issued and will be reviewed shortly along with the other Dior chypres.

Related reading on PerfumeShrine: 
The Dior series, fragrance reviews of classic perfumes




Pic of E.Roudnitska courtesy of artetparfum, Dior ad from parfumsdepub. Translations of quotes from the French by Elena Vosnaki

Optical Scentsibilities -new feature!

Perfume Shrine has an eye for the visual as well as a nose for the olfactual, as has surely been apparent to our readers by now. In the interests of pursuing the investigation of common themes running through perfume images, a new feature is introduced: Optical Scentsibilities. A feature focusing on elective affinities among images concerning fragrances that will run regularly from now on.

The idea came up while releafing my art books, which abundantly depict what Umberto Eco has so infamously made an academic career out of: semiotics, of course. Like "books talk about other books", images draw inspiration from other images and perhaps instill a new twist on an older theme. In this sense there is no purpose of talking about "plagiarism", as it is well established that there can be no parthenogenesis in art. Basically, everything has already been said and there is nothing trully new under the sun. However it is interesting to contemplate just how some undercurrent runs through similar concepts.

Today we focus on two takes on the dark-silhouetted-profile hovering over a bottle resting on the top of the knee. Here is an example by Fidji, the green floral perfume by Guy Laroche. The brilliant tagline reads: "The bare essential. All it needs is you". There is a quiet anticipation in the picture, as if you are waiting for that face to turn into focus, into the light and speak. Which is obviously what the perfume does for you, anyway...

And there you can witness a comparable image advertising the floriental Boucheron Femme. There is a difference in more overt sensuality in the second paradigm, conveyed through the half opened lips, which is logical considering that the advertisement came out in 2003 (and it had a similar male counterpart for Boucheron Homme), while the one for Fidji is older (per my calculations late 70s to early 80s). In most other regards however there is an uncanny similarity.

Another case is within the same brand: Rochas did a very similar print campaign for two of their feminine perfumes. Lumière came with this advertisment in 1986 (the scent first launched in 1984 and got re-orchestrated in 2000, reportedly to its detriment): the nude feminine back holds an aura of subtle seduction, seemingly vulnerable and leading to other paths to sensuousness. In this image the soft focus of the lilac colour palette imparts a soft halo of romanticism.

Contrast with this one, for Rochas' Mystère (scent launched in 1978, the ad is from the 80s). The same position of the model, focusing on the nude back and with a coif to match, but this time with a more dynamic arm position which, with its arrow line, suggests a certain assertiveness and with a dark yet fiery colour palette that hints at more seductive intentions.
I am guessing that here we have a case of a brand wanting to establish an homogenous aesthetic in its products and I think it succeeds in providing a backdrop of reference. This intent is more apparent if we notice the taglines: "Vous laissez tant d'énigme derrière vous" (=you leave such an enigma behind) for Mystère and "Vous laissez tant d'éclat derrière vous" (=you leave such a luminosity behind) for Lumière. If you are extra attentive you will also notice that the names are analogous in number of syllables, intonation and way of pronunciation.
Bravo, Rochas advertising team!

Pics from cofe.ru, image des parfums, parfums de pub and Ebay

Fragrant News: Christian Dior La Collection Particuliere

According to latest news on Russian site Moon-fish, Christian Dior House celebrates its 60 years anniversary and to commemorate the event will release La Collection Particulière, a new exclusive line of feminine scents, named Passage No.4, No.8 and No.9, proposed by John Galliano. The three perfumes in the new collection are dedicated to three of Dior's favourite models - France, Lucky and Victoire.

The actual scents were inspired by three flowers - rose, iris and tuberose. The bottles will be crystal amphoras like those used for the first Dior scents, in the bandeau tricolore: the three colours of the French flag ~red, white and blue. They come in a 75ml/2.5oz spray.
The perfumer behind them, Francois Demachy, describes the scents as "jewelled flowers".

Official notes:

Rose (France) - fiery rose with orange, pepper, amber and musk.
Iris (Lucky) - violet with iris, plus musk notes from ambrette seeds.
Tuberose (Victoire) - tuberose with jasmine, soft patchouli and vanilla.

According to other sources (ie.Octavian Coifan) three supermodels inspired the type of woman represented by each of them: Stella Tennant for Rose, Kate Moss for Iris and Gisele Budchen for Tuberose.


La Collection Particulière will debut in 30 Dior boutiques around the world starting Nov.19th

EDIT to add official Dior descriptions:

Passage No 4 (Rose): "A sovereign rose, a fiery pimento, a journey, a garden."

Passage No 8 (Iris): "A velvet violet, a sophisticated iris, a dream, a burst of laughter."

Passage No 9 (Tuberose): "A dazzling tuberose, creamy woods, late nights, fireworks."

Also Octavian Coifan has been the very first to smell those and has great things to say too. Please go to this link to read his reviews:
Reviews of scents in La Collection Particulière by Dior, by Octavian Coifan (1000fragrances).


Perfume Shrine will focus in depth on the Dior chypres shortly. Stay tuned!!

Pic from parfumdepub