How Perfumer Francis Kurkdjian Reinvented Dior J’adore

"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links."

Just like a favorite pair of jeans, the right fragrance can also be an essential part of your wardrobe. Few understand this better than Francis Kurkdjian, a prolific perfumer in his own right and Parfums Christian Dior’s latest creative director of perfume. Instead of releasing an entirely new creation for his first launch with the house, he decided to refine its cult-classic J’adore Eau de Parfum instead, developing the simplified yet enhanced L’Or de J’adore, which is out now.

“I always start with the story,” Kurkdjian says of his creation process. “When I was shown the timeline for future projects, we discussed how comfortable I was with the options I was given, and we made some minor yet meaningful changes. Ultimately, we had the idea to reshape the previous 1999 version, which was Eau de Parfum. This version is a parfum that existed more or less 15 years ago, so we thought there was room to reshape it.”

J’adore’s original story centered on love of gold, but with Dior’s new scent, the narrative has shifted to celebration and appreciation of the gold within J’adore itself.

“The flowers are the gold of J’adore,” Kurkdjian explains. “To make the purest quality of gold, you have to heat it and make it liquid, so the impurities evaporate. We tried to do build a parallel with the perfume itself: What if we get rid of the unnecessary in the formula? What if we try to make it more concise? When you combine all that together, you have a story to start.” The updated fragrance combines Dior’s love of flowers and a vision of femininity, something Kurkdjian says is very important to the brand.

A composition of absolute orange blossom, Jasminum grandiflorum, and centifolia rose round out L’Or de J’adore, a floral scent that aims to be emblematic of the warmth of sunlight gracing a shoulder. “Flowers are part of our DNA. Christian Dior was in love with flowers since he was a child with his mother, and J’adore is all about flowers. Gold as a material is also about who we are. The name Dior, in French, we can see as a contraction of D’or et Or, so: gold and gold.”

The perfumer also tells me that crafting a new scent takes around 18 months. In his current director role, not only does Kurkdjian have the ability to develop ideas on behalf of the brand, he also has a greater capacity within the industry to actually implement them and even create his own ingredients.

“I started almost as soon as I joined the company at the end of 2021,” he says. “We’re launching the perfume about a year and a half, almost two years after, because it really takes time to create, to craft, for sourcing, producing, manufacturing. It’s like in fashion when designers create 100 silhouettes, and then they go to production. So, I think starting with J’adore was a good appetizer.’

Kurkdjian says that his experience thus far working with Dior has been unlike any other, even at his own maison. Though he’s well established in the industry, the expert is still finding his footing distinguishing his specific tastes from the 76-year-old brand’s larger ethos.

“It’s about trying to define what is Dior and what is not, or what is me and what is Dior, and not to blur the lines too much,” he says. “It’s almost like acting in two plays at the same time.” While managing two global beauty brands is no small feat, Kurkdjian says he partly accepted his position to allow himself a broader perspective, thanks to a little distance between both companies. Being in-house also makes it easier to go more “in depth” creatively, just as creative directors do in the fashion industry.

“I think every single artistic director, not only for beauty but for fashion as well, all went back and started from the roots. And J’adore in a way, even though it’s from 1999, belongs to the roots and DNA of Dior. It’s an icon of the maison, and J’adore is an iconic perfume within the perfume world.” In addition to elevating its signature scent and backstory for 2023, J’adore’s iconic bottle has also been transformed. The new L’Or de J’adore echoes the sophistication of its predecessor, but with a modern simplified twist, capturing the refinement of the scent and a new era of fragrance at Dior.

The signature egg-shaped bottle has been streamlined, and the necklace now looks like melted gold rather than stacked bangles. Formerly made of plastic, the cap is now made of glass.

As for L’Or de J’adore’s potential to achieve the same viral reach of some of his previous creations, Kurkdjian says: “It’s a mystery of why one takes off as a success and why another does not. When you create something, you think you did everything well, and then there is the answer from the people, from the market, in a way. I would say so far, so good with this first one—it seems to be on track to be a good success.”

The time frame for taste in fragrance doesn’t translate the same way as other facets of beauty, he adds, and scent creation means keeping longevity front of mind. In a sea of trending sweet and fruity gourmand perfumes, one of the main goals for L’Or de J’adore is to modernize the elements of a traditionally floral perfume and cement the scent’s legacy for future generations.

L’Or de J’adore is available for $170 at dior.com.

You Might Also Like

• 4 Investment-Worthy Skincare Finds From Sephora

• The 17 Best Retinol Creams Worth Adding to Your Skin Care Routine