Dior is a land to be explored, and a heritage to embrace.
Like all those before him who revisited the curve of the Bar suit, or reinvented a legendary scent, Francis Kurkdjian is, in turn, diving into the soul of Dior.
J'adore was essential for him.
So that J'adore l’Or becomes an Or de J'adore brimming with meaning and depth.
Brilliant and round, sensual and smooth, it is an immediate olfactory pleasure.
For J'adore, Francis Kurkdjian became a seeker of gold.
Francis Kurkdjian brings a new perspective to J'adore, seeking its most essential expression with the ultimate aim of obtaining its purest quintessence.
He therefore turns to the very origins of the legendary bouquet’s composition, where flowers converse with each other, and no single bloom takes precedence.
Francis Kurkdjian brings a new perspective to J'adore, seeking its most essential expression with the ultimate aim of obtaining its purest quintessence.
He therefore turns to the very origins of the legendary bouquet’s composition, where flowers converse with each other, and no single bloom takes precedence.
He questions this balance, which gives rise to a majestic and abstract floral impression. For J'adore does not bear the scent of every flower, but delivers the very real sensation of a unique, symbolic and symbiotic bloom. It is the perfect and universal embodiment of florals.
This ideal flower, which does not exist, singlehandedly embodies the Dior spirit.
Inspired by this luxuriant mystery, he chose to reinterpret its style and disrupt its proportions in order to shine new light on its beauty.
His J'adore has the shimmering gleam of a precious liquid.
It is a bath of molten gold reflecting its origins, into which one sinks sensually and adoringly.
With the concept defined, the new style takes shape.
Francis Kurkdjian approaches the floral bouquet in two steps, first refining the formula to better discern it, then celebrating the flowers, played in a major key. He streamlines the one, in order to elevate the other.
L’Or de J'adore undergoes a transformation, celebrating a “gigantic” floral aspect that is literally extraordinary.
The bouquet is renewed, updated, carried by flowers pushed to their maximum and masterfully overdosed.
Moving from the myriad to the streamlined, Francis Kurkdjian creates a radical transformation, as though he were moving from pointillism to contemporary art.
Jasmine and rose are extrapolated, and are both round and striking.
Lily of the valley and violet shine and rejoice.
The florals of the new bouquet are immediate and direct.
Tracking forward, zooming-in, their beauty is revealed full-scale on the screen.
Like warm gold rippling over the skin.
A fluid, smooth liquid gleams golden.
The soft sensation of a finger touching the tip of a velvet petal.
Or the curve of a shoulder offered to a generous sun.
L’Or de J'adore created by Francis Kurkdjian is a sensual, sensorial and dazzling pleasure.
The simultaneously complex, crystal-clear and immediate composition reveals its bouquet effusively, unambiguously.
With neither diversion nor background noise, everything is said at once, with love, sincerity and majesty. This is a new J'adore that touches the heart and transports the senses.
Going straight to the heart of the matter, it presents rounded flowers, elevated to a level of richness that invites touch. Verging on the gourmand, it sweeps down into smooth, intense pleasure that maintains its noble accents. Like the caress of a petal, lavish and sensual, there is nothing sharp in these magical accords where the flowers are fluid and linked. The effect is there, palpable, mingling with softness and with sensuality warmed in the rays of a subdued sun.
L’Or de J’adore offers up its spectacular concentration and its radiant roundness, and leaves behind a generous and noble trail of scent.
All curves and roundness, the legendary silhouette of the J'adore amphora sensually holds Francis Kurkdjian’s new composition. For L’Or de J'adore, the iconic bottle is reinvented and adorned with precious materials. The necklace is different, echoing the warmth of the scent, transformed into fluid and organic gold that lies in waves along the glass. The softened appeal of the glass presents a new roundness in harmony with the smooth flowers of the bouquet. The weightless finishing touch now sees a glass bead set on the light and transparent lid.
Ever more luxurious, the l’Or de J’adore amphora was designed as a precious bottle that one owns so as to always have it nearby.
Designed to last, its lid, graced with noble materials, becomes a real talisman that can be kept over time to house new “perfume droplets”. Dedicated solely to the parfum concentration, the minimalist glass body of the l’Or de J’adore amphora will be available as a refill from March 2024.
Bathed in a warm light of sparkling and solar gold, Charlize Theron glows with femininity. Both serene and triumphant, she cradles the legendary amphora embellished with a new, flowing, organic gold design. Radiantly beautiful, she continues to embody the soul of J'adore with the same power and luminosity. She is wearing a dress designed exclusively for her by Maria Grazia Chiuri; its streamlined elegance reveals sensual golden skin that is bare, unadorned, without jewels. Yet precious gold is fully present, contained in her fragrance. It is an ode to triumphant, powerful and serene femininity.
The light and precious J’adore amphora seems to balance at the heart of an open flower that provides a perfect case of gleaming golden beads. The work, both symbiotic and mesmerizing, orchestrates the new artistic dialogue between Jean-Michel Othoniel and J'adore. The universe of the famous French artist blends in obvious harmony with that of the legendary fragrance, seeing their shared passion for flowers meet, like a celebration of enchanting, living gold. Inspired by the glass curves of the iconic amphora, Jean-Michel Othoniel designed an exquisite flower-case to house the “L’Or de J'adore” fragrance, the first J'adore composition created by Francis Kurkdjian. An absolute work of art, this limited-edition never-ending rose can – in the height of luxury – be invited into one’s home for contemplation.
Refik Anadol, the renowned media artist whose work “Unsupervised” is currently on view at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, was inspired by L’Or de J'adore to create a ground-breaking new artwork. Perpetuating the links that bring together the House of Dior and artists, Anadol began by meeting Francis Kurkdjian, the creator of the precious fragrance. This inspired a hypnotic virtual artwork displaying dynamic, liquid gold imagined by artificial intelligence.
The ethereal rose-case designed by Jean-Michel Othoniel is a wonderful miniature work of art that is signed and numbered. Imbued with the full magic of the artist’s monumental sculptures, it is the perfect counterpart to Francis Kurkdjian’s composition, with the beads of its petals tracing a hyperbolic flower that is effusive and polished. But the pathway to its appearance was a long one, decorated in bronze and gold. It all began for the artist with the contemplation of a “real” rose, which he painted in watercolour. The illustration was transformed into the spatial plane when he made a first, three-dimension model. This model was then handed over to the foundry, which works using the traditional lost-wax casting technique. The beads of this absolute gem of precision, created in bronze, where hand polished one by one, before being plunged into a bath of molten gold.
Set delicately in this bronze and gold flower, the crystal amphora designed by Jean-Michel Othoniel provides an ethereal, perfectly balanced figure 8, underlining the soft harmony of the New Look created by Christian Dior. The expressive fluid gold of its lid embraces the weightless bead, then flows in waves over the crystal curves of the bottle. Surprisingly, the glass base is full and rounded, making it impossible to balance the bottle without the flower that houses it. In short, it embodies the perfect symbiosis between the precious amphora with a polished neck, and its case, sculpted like a calyx.
A white trunk designed in the image of the cases used to transport artworks, and created to the scale of this creation, protects the amphora and its flower until they arrive at their final exhibition site.
Born in 1964 in Saint-Etienne, France, Jean-Michel Othoniel has been inventing a universe with multiple contours since the late 1980s. His works can be found in the world’s best contemporary art museums, foundations and private collections.
More recently, his work has taken on an architectural dimension, engaging with gardens or historical sites through public or private commissions around the world. Favoring materials with poetic and sensitive properties, Jean-Michel Othoniel works with wax, sulfur, and glass, which has become his hallmark. The delicacy of glass and the subtlety of its colors played an important role in the artist’s vast project: to poeticize and re-enchant the world.
In 2021, on the invitation of the Petit Palais, Othoniel took over its garden and the galleries housing its permanent collections and presented an exhibition that brought the museum’s architecture into play. “Le Théorème de Narcisse” (The Theorem of Narcissus) offered visitors a journey of wonderment. Continuing this passion, Jean-Michel Othoniel showed his passion for gardens with “Treasure gardens”, at the Seoul Museum of Art and at the Imperial Palace Garden. He was officially inducted into France’s Académie des Beaux-Arts in 2021.
In 2023, Jean-Michel Othoniel will unveil a new series of six large sculptures throughout the Brooklyn Botanic Garden for an important summer exhibition.
The initial encounter between Francis Kurkdjian and Refik Anadol revealed a new challenge – how to embody a fragrance and make “the invisible visible”. In other words, how can one transform the floral magic of L’Or de J'adore into an artwork that is as sensorial, attractive, and addictive as its olfactory counterpart? The answer came from the perfume itself coupled with Anadol’s archive of millions of images of the world’s flowers and led to a creative explosion.
“Using the numerical composition of the formula and the enormous floral dataset my studio has been collecting for over two years, we trained our AI to dream of gold and flowers”. The composition data of L’Or de J’adore fragrance was therefore transformed by AI, giving rise to supple and beautiful virtual waves of liquid gold and flower images.
J’adore AI Data Sculpture emphasizes the idea that beauty can be born of data, with Anadol transforming the formula of the iconic perfume into a stunning new AI Data Sculpture in his signature style that is as visually striking as it is poetic. The result is an innovative and timeless artwork to be experienced through sight and scent.
Refik Anadol (b. 1985, Istanbul, Turkey) is an internationally renowned media artist, director, and pioneer in the aesthetics of data and machine intelligence. He is the Director of Refik Anadol Studio in Los Angeles and teaching at UCLA’s Department of Design Media Arts. Anadol’s work locates creativity at the intersection of humans and machines. Anadol’s site-specific data paintings and sculptures, live audio/visual performances, and immersive installations take many forms, while encouraging us to rethink our engagement with the physical world, collective experiences, public art, decentralized networks, and the creative potential of AI. Anadol’s work has been exhibited at venues including MoMA, Centre Pompidou-Metz, Art Basel, National Gallery of Victoria, Venice Architecture Biennale, Hammer Museum, Arken Museum, Dongdaemun Design Plaza, Ars Electronica, Istanbul Modern, and ZKM | Center for Art and New Media. Anadol has received a number of awards and prizes including the Lorenzo il Magnifico Lifetime Achievement Award for New Media Art, Microsoft Research’s Best Vision Award, German Design Award, UCLA Art+Architecture Moss Award, and Columbia University’s Breakthrough in Storytelling Award.
