Miss Dior by Dior

A true gem of the floral chypre, a pity it’s no longer available. The most perfect and rounded galbanum I’ve ever tried. This fragrance, for me, sums up true aesthetic balance, something that’s being lost every day (the old school I defend without giving up on the modern). I hope this thread helps rescue forgotten treasures. Personality: 10/10, Longevity: 10/10, Scent: transporting and magnificent.

A few days ago I received a package with three 5ml samples of Dior: Miss Dior EDT, Poison Esprit, and Dune. Although I don’t know the exact year, I estimate they’re from the 90s, since Dune launched in 1990. Starting with Miss Dior: at first, it smells green and lovely, I imagine it’s the galbanum; then it settles into a woody phase, and later a earthy-mossy note emerges that adds freshness. Out of all the Miss Diors, I’d only tried the 2017 version before, and they’re completely different in scent and quality; I definitely prefer this vintage. I absolutely loved it. Edit: I finished the miniature with a heavy heart, not sure if I’ll find another one like it, but I’m glad I got to know this gem that will always hold a special place among my favorites.

Liquid elegance. Olympic beauty. Zeus turned into a shower of gold to seduce Danae, and Aphrodite must have sprayed Miss Dior on the gods and mortals she charmed. Miss Dior is the child of a post-war era of regained freedom and Christian Dior’s desire to create a fragrance that smelled like love. And so it was born: beautiful and free, like Aphrodite from the sea foam. @allan27880: how well I understand you. It’s dreamlike, no matter how cheesy it sounds. I also got to know it through one of my aunts. I felt a genuine fascination whenever I saw the bottle on her shelf. My memories of Miss Dior are tied to outings with her to the movies or the theater, her heels and her wild silk jackets in vivid colors. Just looking at the bottle used to dazzle me. My aunt would often pull me out of school boredom, and I knew that with her, new and delicious experiences awaited. She’d hold my hand, and the galbanum, moss, labdanum, leather, and all those tough yet distinguished notes comforted me like an exotic elixir. She’s 85 now and hasn’t worn it in years. Not long ago, I bought her a bottle of the 2013 Miss Dior by Demachy, thinking only the packaging had changed. I’d been relying on the same perfumes for special occasions, wearing fresh colognes, and hadn’t yet gotten into collecting, so in my ignorance, I didn’t realize the holocaust being perpetrated in some perfume houses with reformulations. When my aunt sprayed it, she said it was nice, but I still remember her face of disappointment. She’s been switching to soft EDTs for a while. Recently, I tried Cabochard 2019, whose resemblance to Miss Dior is more than intentional (even down to the ribbon on the bottle…), and I let her smell it to see if it would wake up any memories of her old fragrance. No. Her memory just isn’t up to it anymore. It’s the most elegant aldehyde bomb I’ve ever smelled, and no one will convince me anything surpasses it. It seemed, and still seems, unreachable, both in aura and price, though I don’t rule out dipping into savings to grab a vintage EDP bottle. Until now, I’ve been comforted by my Cabochard 2019, which is very beautiful… but not as much as her. Miss Dior is beautiful among the beautiful, and impossible to be more so.

Testing vintage perfumes brings me the same joy as a child in a candy store. Nothing compares in quality, nuance, and depth. Miss Dior is an interesting collection of contradictions: an exuberant bouquet of floral aldehydes in a bottle that looks masculine with its chevron-patterned legs. The top is an absolute delight, alternating fresh bergamot and sage with the resinous charm of galbanum, gardenia, and radiant aldehydes, wrapped in an animalic dirtiness before the feminine varnish takes over. Miss Dior plays with an ingenuity that contradicts its complexity, coming off as shamelessly sexier than its presentation suggests. Perhaps, made for a woman in her forties, it represents a socially repressed yet prominently secret sexuality in the sheets. Vintage florals are wonderful, bruised over a base of leather and tobacco, cut with something sharp and green to make them shine. I wish I could travel back in time to a café with a woman wearing this elixir, savoring every moment. When Dior perfumes were works of art, uncompromising chypres arranged like an evening gown in an elegant hotel. A sensual, challenging, and sophisticated experience. For a trained nose, it’s undoubtedly from yesterday, and that’s why it’s more precious. Miss Dior is a green chypre that will never go out of style, created by a master hand with much love. Outstanding.

Miss Dior belongs to a nature too wild and distant, like animals extinct due to human fault. On a sad afternoon, I needed such a being to accompany me. It’s like walking at night through the corridors of a castle mansion in Terence Fisher films, not for artificiality but for darkness, yet the shine of its elegance makes it beautiful. It reminds me of clothes recovered from a cemetery, candelabras and candles almost finished. It has a non-eclectic charisma, made to seduce without trying to conquer simple noses. Its keyword is ‘extinct’. It’s an extinct scent of so many disappeared things, like old clothes in a drawer with soaps, herbs and lost photographs. It’s a portrait of an era when you perfumed yourself to fit pre-established norms, with relentless sobriety but very sensitive; minutes later it smells like a dressing room of beautiful, intelligent and ladylike women. I imagine how she combs her hair with a comb engraved with her initials. A marvel, pure breed. It hurts me to think that the sweetness of this extinct feline was known at the dawn of its loss. There’s no doubt that losing this perfume means losing something more than a liquid, one of the best DNA of perfumery.

I had the fortune of owning this excellent vintage piece many years ago, the one shown in the picture. You have no idea how beautiful it was, how complex, distinctive and opulent. It referred to the strong side of a woman, like a Zsa Zsa Gabor, María Félix or Ava Gardner, precious, with an overwhelming presence that didn’t flinch. That was Miss Dior when I knew it. I can’t describe its evolution because I was 10 years old when my mom gave it to me (she didn’t like it); it was hard to decipher the notes. I’ll talk about the soul of vintage Miss Dior: it smelled herbal, powdery, with dry tints. Today I’d say it smelled of moss, galbanum, leather, patchouli, vetiver, lily root, carnation and narcissus. At first it could be strong, dry and perhaps masculine, but once it settled on the skin the herbal touch became elegant and powdery, with flowers among which I clearly remember the narcissus and the carnation. I see it as very woody; for me it was herbal, the wood maybe just in the background like a soft breeze. It’s a pity and frustration that they tear apart creations so beautiful, take away their soul, like leaving a flower without its perfume. Miss Dior was elegant, seductive, intense and with great personality, a true jewel.

Miss Dior hit the market in 1947, right at the end of World War II, alongside the launch of Dior’s ‘New Look.’ The fragrance was part of the whole package, targeting a young, debutant but firm and bold audience. In terms of aroma vision, I see it as quite ahead of its time. It quickly became a bestseller, standing out since it had titans like L’Air Du Temps by Nina Ricci as competition. As a fun fact, it was worn by personalities like Eva Perón and actress Rita Hayworth. I consider Miss Dior a fragrance ahead of its time; it could easily pass unnoticed as a seventies launch, appealing to that structure of crisp, soapy, and rough chypre accords found in fragrances like Clinique Aromatics Elixir, Chanel N°19, or even Diorella. It seems an immediate answer to what Ma Griffe de Carven was at the time. Quickly, it wasn’t a gentle fragrance; in fact, it was enthusiastic in a rather jovial yet aggressive and chaotic way. It had a terribly herbaceous, rough, dry, sharp, and crisp profile; reminiscent of the aroma of herbs submerged in mud caused by rain, combined with a series of diffuse floral trails layered over a classic base of clean, soapy aldehydes. Miss Dior managed to combine the earthy tone of green notes with the cleanliness of floral and aldehyde accords to create a unique, effervescent, and magnetic piece that seemed to bubble with joy. Occasionally, it manifested certain smoky, dry nuances reminiscent of incense (from the galbanum note), and visceral sweet/balsamic tones from labdanum and ambiguous flowers. Miss Dior was a multidimensional perfume, boasting the best of classic chypres: the astringent, sharp, concise, and violent edges, combined with the tenderness of psychedelic aldehydes that provided such an ambiguous scent it didn’t seem to be anything like the components that made it up. Green, crisp, electric, clean, and extremely earthy. Miss Dior was simply a brilliant fragrance in many aspects. Longevity was excellent and the sillage moderate. In 2010, it received a ‘remasterization,’ where it was adapted to the emerging context of new-millennium neo-chypres, or in other words, formulated as a response/imitation of Chanel’s Coco Mademoiselle, keeping the name (with a very ugly surname in parentheses) and selling a fragrance that, in my opinion, is simply boring and cheesy (not to mention its flood of flankers, many—if not all—forgettable). Currently, there’s an Miss Dior (Originale) on offer that, theoretically, recalls or evokes the 40s fragrance, with very little success, if you’ll allow me to say so.

Miss Dior was born in 1947, right as the war was ending and Dior launched the ‘New Look’. It was made for young, brave, new girls. Olfactorily, it was way ahead of its time: it sold incredibly well, even beating out giants like Nina Ricci’s L’Air Du Temps. Fun fact: Eva Perón and Rita Hayworth wore it. Today, the original 40s version smells like a 70s chypre: green, soapy, rough, and crisp, like wet grass in the mud with clean flowers and aldehydes. It’s aggressive yet cheerful, with smoky galbanum notes and the sweetness of labdanum. It’s electric, earthy, and bright. The longevity is good and the sillage is moderate. In 2010, they ‘remastered’ it to resemble Coco Mademoiselle, resulting in something cheesy and boring. The current Miss Dior Originale tries to evoke the 40s but doesn’t quite pull it off.

This is the perfume I miss the most, along with Envy and La Nuit. It’s still in production, but it’s not the same anymore. The original I used as a kid back in the 80s smelled like rolling in clean mud, fresh water with cold flowers and herbs, followed by a dry-down that smelled like some distant animal. It’s clean/dirty, chypre, crisp, and narcotic due to its cleanliness. It’s not a seductive femme fatale type; it’s natural, pure, and primal, without any frills. It’s unisex, as if the Earth gave birth to a perfume and they just put it in a pretty bottle. I miss it so much.

I love this perfume; it’s elegant and exquisite.

No one knows what the original was like, but the version sold in perfume shops between 1998 and 1999 was exquisite… very similar to what Avon later released as Timeless.