Christian Dior named his first perfume after his sister. She had survived a Nazi concentration camp.
Dior opened his fashion house in Paris in 1946. In February 1947 he showed the collection that made him famous, the cinched waist and full skirt the press named the New Look.
The same year the house released its first fragrance, Miss Dior, a floral chypre with leather and galbanum, created by Paul Vacher and Jean Carles. The name honoured Christian's younger sister, Catherine Dior.
Catherine was a member of the French Resistance. The Gestapo arrested her in Paris in July 1944. She was deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, survived, and was later awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Légion d'Honneur. The story goes that someone announced "here is Miss Dior" as she walked in, and the name stuck to the scent.
Christian Dior died in 1957, ten years after the New Look. The house carried on and now sits inside LVMH. Sauvage, launched in 2015, became one of the best-selling men's fragrances in the world.
Here is what the gift box will not tell you. The Miss Dior on the shelf today is not the 1947 scent. It has been reformulated and renamed more than once, most recently by François Demachy. The bottle keeps the history. The liquid has moved on.
You do not need the Avenue Montaigne price to wear the house style. Our Savage Essence (our take on Sauvage) and Miss D'Or (our take on Miss Dior) are UK-made sprays at 35% concentration. See the full Dior collection or the best Dior dupes in the UK.
