One day in 1985, a teenager was wandering along the Champs-Élysées when something caught his attention. There was a woman walking briskly in the distance, but he couldn’t see her well enough to know what about her was so captivating. He became aware of a trail of fragrance in her wake. The scent was Poison, one that defined the 80s with its audacity and potency. It had what perfumers call sillage, the quality of floating in the air, filling a room or, in this case, a boulevard with its mix of berries, sandalwood, musk, jasmine, and just about every note you could name. The 15-year-old was mesmerized.
Francis Kurkdjian conjured up that memory when he faced his first challenge as the perfumer at Dior: to reimagine J’adore, the blockbuster fragrance that’s been on best-seller lists since its introduction, in 1999.
