Thyme with its golden beam of light cleanses and heals. The sight of rows of endless blue in the summer is magnificent. Lavande absolut is the purest essence of this blue flower that is the heart of Provence. It carries you to the days of blue and gold and warms your soul with its sunlight. The parfum is a solar composition of lavande absolut, thyme and orange blossoms. Paradis Provence is the fragrance of the eternal summer – of our youth, our imagination and our passion. the golden sunshine warms your skin, and soft breezes caress your senses, a feeling of deep relaxation prevails. But without the alcohol, water-based fragrances tend to fade quickly, making them extremely ephemeral, hard to formulate, and slightly laborious: You often have to shake them before spritzing to combine the water phase and the oil phase, and in the absence of a chemical stabilizer they can feel tacky on skin.Paradis Provence is the essence of the land we call Provence, Paradise on earth.įields of blue lavande, thyme, orange blossoms, sunflowers following the golden Sun, ancient olive trees, the sky that turns pink as it touches the azure of the Mediterranean and amorous nights drenched in jasmine. Maintaining her neroli’s incredibly fresh, just-picked scent-sweet but green, with a zingy kick that can temper stickier jasmine-is part of the appeal of Parfum d’eau, in which water, which is less volatile than alcohol, is blended with essential oils (neroli, magnolia, jasmine sambac, and a hint of rose), helping to preserve their integrity while creating a milky emulsion. About 1,750 pounds of flower petals yields just a quarter gallon of oil. “I sell exclusively to them,” Archer says, picking the last of the flowers from a monthlong harvest. Courtesy of Parfums Christian DiorĪbout 600 miles south of Paris, in the lush hillside just outside of Cap d’Antibes, Christelle Archer-a sales director turned flower farmer-tends to a 100-year-old bitter orange tree grove as part of an effort to increase transparency and focus on local growers for proprietary ingredients, Dior partnered with Archer in 2017 and began using her neroli oil last year. The original J’adore bottle has been reimagined in opalescent white glass for the neroli-tinged Parfum d’eau. Now, almost 25 years later, the fragrance that helped change the perfume industry is poised for another dose of disruption. “When John started, he didn’t speak French, so he would just say, ‘Oh, J’adore, j’adore, j’adore!’ when he liked something,” Bourdelier recalls. “Galliano was integral to the creation of J’adore,” Bourdelier says of the white-floral fragrance, which began production in 1996, the same year the British-born couturier took over design duty.

One of John Galliano’s Maasai-style gold chokers from fall 1997, the inspiration for the fragrance’s gold-wire-wrapped flacon, is displayed close by. That’s the exact temperature needed to preserve the brand’s first suite of refillable lipsticks (from 1953) the first production run of its cult-favorite cuticle savior, Creme Abricot (1962) and different iterations of the iconic J’adore bottle, derived from Monsieur Dior’s 1949 cyclone dress and rendered here in glass prototypes with factory-cut Baccarat necks. It’s 18 degrees Celsius, about 65 degrees Fahrenheit, Frederic Bourdelier, director of brand culture and heritage at Parfums Christian Dior, confirms. When you step into the cosmetics vault at the Christian Dior archives in Paris, just a few blocks from the impressive Avenue Montaigne flagship and gallery that the French house reopened this past March, there are two things you notice right away: the black-walled, marble-floored space is pristine-and slightly chilly on a mid-May morning.

Flacon parfum