Eau Sauvage

Breaking with the classic Eaux de Cologne offered until then, Eau Sauvage disrupts and upends fragrances heavy with virility to reveal fresh and lively scents with a revolutionary touch of hedione, adding a floral accent. At the end of the 1960s, men and times were changing, and so were their fragrances!

A timeless fragrance, the signature of a rebellious elegance...

Of course, Eau Sauvage is instantly linked to the career of the tumultuous and eternal Alain Delon. Yet Alain Delon was only chosen as the face of the campaign for Eau Sauvage starting in 2009, using photographs taken during the 1960s, notably from the filming of La Piscine.

Before Alain Delon, and from the birth of Eau Sauvage in 1966, the fragrance already had a well-honed communication strategy that, of course, did not take the form of a face of the campaign but of drawn images. It was the artist René Gruau who was tasked with creating the fragrance's advertising posters upon its release. He took pleasure in illustrating a rather virile man (notably thanks to considerable body hair) moving gracefully and briskly through his home to make himself... handsome! A first that, of course, evokes a shift in eras where men began taking care of themselves and enjoying wearing fragrance, all while losing nothing of their virility. A kind of adventurer who smelled good rather than of sweat!

Afterward, Eau Sauvage would be worn by numerous male ambassadors: Johnny Hallyday, Zinédine Zidane, and even comic book heroes Corto Maltese and Largo Winch. Always with the same boldness, a turtleneck rising up to their sharp azure-blue gaze, Eau Sauvage has secured its place in time and in men's hearts. To mark this beautiful, unwavering love story, old 1960s photographs of Alain Delon were chosen in 2009, as a somewhat provocative wink, to represent Eau Sauvage. Better still, in 2001, Dior produced an advertisement using footage from the film Les Aventuriers, released in 1967, featuring a bearded, windswept-haired Alain Delon, described as a hipster ahead of his time...

Alain Delon and Eau Sauvage, the saga of a modernity nourished by eternity.

Eau Sauvage, or the first true fragrance created for men

In 1960, Dior's director Maurice Roger asked the famous nose Edmond Roudnitska to create the celebrated fragrance house's very first men's fragrance under the code name Favori (a reference to the famous Moustache). Six years after numerous exchanges between the two men, Eau Sauvage hit stores, even though tests on a male panel showed considerable reluctance toward this wave of olfactory novelty. And yet...

Eau Sauvage appeared in a world increasingly drawn to a return to natural elements, to ecology, and to a wild life... This fragrance would therefore present men in a new light: still just as virile, but more refined. The emblematic bottle of Eau Sauvage, unchanged since its creation (a unique case in perfumery), was designed by Pierre Camin in the shape of a flask, an essential masculine accessory of the era. But the precious and virile flask was topped with a thimble, an indispensable tool of the couturier, and decorated with drapery... Elements that were, all things considered, not particularly virile, especially for that era...

On the fragrance side, these two facets of the Eau Sauvage man are one and the same: the composition presents bracing, aromatic freshness while revealing a floral heart of hedione, a raw material that is... feminine! Thus the beautiful Eau Sauvage opens with citrus and aromatic top notes of lemon, bergamot, lavender, rosemary, thyme, and basil. Its heart offers the softness of hedione, a molecule just discovered, evoking the scent of jasmine, a raw material that had become too rare and therefore too expensive. Finally, of course, Eau Sauvage offers a chypre accord of oakmoss, patchouli, and vetiver to give a deep sillage to men in search of new sensations, new feelings.

Unexpected, unprecedented, Eau Sauvage is the image of a youth in the midst of upheaval. A lively, bubbling youth in search of another truth. Despite the passing years, men still enjoy seeking out those truths in their Eau Sauvage fragrance, which has become a great classic of perfumery...