Miss Dior Perfume - Decoding a Bottle of Love and Freedom

Decoding A Bottle Of Love and Freedom

        Miss Dior perfume is a glamorous fragrance created by Mr. Christian Dior in 1947, which has gained enduring popularity and developed a number of variants with different concentrations. According to a sales report, it was 2014’s top 8 best selling feminine perfume in France (Megan in sainte maxime). In this article, I’ll mainly discuss the desirability of Miss Dior Blooming Bouquet (new), as shown in the picture on the right. The internal features of Miss Dior Blooming Bouquet demonstrate love and freedom and the company centers on this point to appeal to target buyers.

When one first sees Miss Dior Blooming Bouquet, its form and color will impress him or her a lot. The bottle is geometric with straight lines but is softened with a reflective bow tie between the body and the lid. Some houndstooth patterns are engraved on the sides of the heavy square glass, making it tempting and a little bit playful. The pink fragrance inside shimmers like sunbeams and the label with italics looks beautiful and conspicuous. The glass bottle sets the perfume off to advantage and also reminds people of crystal-like love—pure without any defect. Japanese may consider the design too ornate because they tend to appreciate ‘simplicity’, which means using the most economical ways to obtain the desired effect (Keene). But the design accords with Western aesthetics in which a beautiful object is often an attention-getter with the help of decorations.

Then the person is tempted to open the lid and almost immediately, a complex scent flows like a flower lake. It is said to “glorify mandarin and peony on downy notes of white musk” and “its unique trail combines Damascene rose essence with fruity notes to recreate the outstanding scent of this flower, elusive in its natural state.”(Christian Dior – Produits Beauté Et Fragrance Dior.) According to one perfumer François Demachy, “The beauty of Miss Dior stems from the harmonious blend of citrus, floral and woody notes…Miss Dior is a promise of love.”

Through its form, color and scent as a whole, Miss Dior Blooming Bouquet serves a wide range of functions. It has high usability, because from my own experience, a spray can last for more than five hours. According to Immanuel Kant, beauty provokes an aesthetic experience that has no other purpose. However, Miss Dior, like many other modern products, is both beautiful and useful. Miss Dior Blooming Bouquet creates a sweet and balmy scent, thus satisfying users themselves and impressing other people. Moreover, it provides memorable user experience because users feel that they can resonate with the youthful essence of Miss Dior. Today’s young women are more active to look for happiness in life. Miss Dior gives them sources of happiness and accords with their elegant and spirited characters. Therefore, the perfume subtly influences you and persuades you not to save it and just use it every time you feel you want to show your charm and the meaning of freedom.

The fact that Miss Dior was the first perfume by Christian Dior adds to its mystery. During 1940s, Christian Dior decided to create his first fragrance and wanted to bring back women’s smiles. He drew inspiration from Catherine, his beloved younger sister as well as the time they spent together in 1924 at Villa Les Rhumbs, their once beautiful summer home(Grantham). After Catherine returned from the bleakest days of WWII, she chose to continue living with full life and desire. She was ‘a paradigm of energy and light-heartedness’ and Miss Dior ‘inherited her love of liberty’ (Grantham). Miss Dior has evolved for many times but still represents freedom and vitality nowadays.

When it comes to how Miss Dior is made, we should know that perfumery is actually in between craft and mass production. Although essences are produced or extracted in large quantities, the quality of perfumes also depends on flavorists’ own ability and taste. Mexican writer Octavia Paz and architectural history expert Adrian Forty agreed that function plays an important role in modern design. Octavia Paz advocated handmade things because he believed that craft possesses both beauty and function while Adrian Forty thought mass production could lower costs, increase sales and feed more people’s desires. As a result, the manufacturing of Miss Dior integrates the advantages of both craft and mass production, which makes it at the same time beautiful, useful and more economical than totally handmade perfumes.        

External factors contribute to Miss Dior’s success as well and advertising strategy is undoubtedly the top reason. Emphasis is put on network marketing. “Dior is present on many channels: Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Mobile application remaining the basic channels for digital strategy but also Instagram, Tumblr or Pinterest where only few luxury brands have already created some accounts”(Bougnoux). Besides, Dior frequently places commercials on fashion magazines such as Vogue and Marie-Claire, and holds special events related to Miss Dior. For example, it brought the work of 16 female artists to a Shanghai exhibit that ran during July 2014 to reinterpret Miss Dior(Luxury Daily). In addition, it has released a series of aspirational films, including the 2015 one directed by Anton Corbijn and starring Natalie Portman. In the film, Portman plays a bride-to-be who runs away on the wedding, casting aside her shoes, stripping from her Dior Couture gown into a strapless black dress and finally picked up by a circling helicopter (Niven). "The story is about escaping, about getting away from all the things that tie you down in life," said Anton Corbijn. As you can see, the idea of the film is tightly connected with the concept of love and freedom that Miss Dior perfume stands for. As a result, the success of Dior’s advertising strategy not only lies in its various media and methods but also the fact that it communicates on the product’s value and meaning. This makes the product it promotes more desirable and the brand more influential.