DIOR presents
Discover the craftsmen who make Dior Perfumes with love every day.
I was in the fields with my grandmother when I was 5.
I had my little basket, I had my bag of roses.
When we are little, we love being like grown-ups.
My great-grandmother began fragrant-flower production
with her children in the 1950s.
Then my father took over production with my mother
and I decided, because at 20 flowers and soil didn’t interest me,
Dior Fragrant Flowers Producer
I decided to go in another direction.
After a few years of working in an office, being shut in,
Le Domaine de Manon, Grasse, South of France
I decided to come back to the business.
It was clear, it was the right time.
Most likely,
when you are born in Grasse, you have a connection with scents.
In the Grasse region we have always grown the centifolia rose
because when it blooms in this region,
it is unique.
No other rose in the world has the same honey notes, the multitude of facets,
the citrus, pepper, spicy, artichoke, cardamom notes.
All that comes from the terroir, like vine.
The terroir has an impact both on the taste and on the smell.
And the centifolia has always been cultivated in Grasse for perfume.
For me, Miss Dior is an eternal perfume.
I think it is an iconic perfume.
It has a gourmand side, a floral gourmand side.
For me, Miss Dior is an airy and blissful perfume,
like holidays.
In the fields, you have a different view of time.
I like that my time is no longer divided into hours, days, weeks.
My time is divided into seasons.
But it is not arbitrary.
It is a logical division of what happens in nature.
So it is less rational,
but it is also less abstract.
My father always did things with passion, with love, with desire.
I have admiration for my father,
and obviously incredible love.
He is someone who is so good,
someone who loves things, loves life, loves people
and above all, loves flowers.
I think he trained me
and passed it on to me, but very early on.
Nothing in the world would make me change jobs
or change raw material.
I wouldn’t do anything else.
Of course there are sacrifices, there are times when it is difficult,
when we head down to the fields and it is 5°,
we have to trim the rose bushes and we are frozen.
But we are so happy when we have finished the day and we look back
and we have accomplished all that work.
I often have my head in the clouds,
but my feet are firmly planted on the ground.
The fragrant flower – flowers are beautiful, they are feminine,
but when you have scent, it is a magical thing.
It’s futile, it’s immaterial,
it does you good. You are working with the soil
for something precious, for something magical.
It is absolutely necessary.
I wear perfume even to put manure on the fields.
The ultimate luxury
is when everyone is asleep and at 5 AM you have your coffee
sitting on the grass,
in this extraordinary silence,
with of course the sound of the birds and the first insects,
the smell of daybreak, if only that could last hours!
Those are the precious moments.
You feel like you are alone in the world, and the world belongs to you.
Maybe that is what happiness is, simple as that.
Such moments fill you with happiness because they are satisfying
and fulfilling.
The more I progress, the more epicurean I become.
This pleasure of the senses for me is incredibly important.
And the more I progress, the more important it is.
For 10 years François Demachy has been fostering partnerships between DIOR and producers of fragrant flowers in the Grasse region, perpetuating the unique connection of Christian Dior with the South of France.