Milly-La-Forêt

With Milly-la-Forêt, this time we venture into the solitary moments of the great couturier, without any grandiloquent effect, but rather filled with beautiful floral delicacies and woody scents.

Milly-La-Forêt, or the scented memory of Christian Dior's bucolic retreat

Christian Dior was a very contrasted figure in the Parisian world of fashion and creation. While he particularly enjoyed festive and worldly atmospheres, as depicted by Grand Bal or Cologne Royale, he also liked to withdraw far from this Parisian frenzy to find calm and inspiration beneath the shade of trees, away from the turmoil of the city.

It was at his mill in Milly-la-Forêt that the couturier liked to come and contemplate nature to find inspiration and rest, and it is precisely in memory of this symbolic place that François Demachy paid tribute with his fragrance Milly-La-Forêt.

Thus protected from any neighborhood, with only the view of my flowers, my canals and my little pond, I can hear in peace the sound of the bells of Milly, Christian Dior recounted.

Thus François Demachy composed for Milly-La-Forêt an ode to nature and its light and shade. He played with his raw materials to give Milly-La-Forêt the scent of a walk in the forest, sometimes shadowy in the undergrowth, sometimes bathed in light by a clearing.

Moreover, Christian Dior's famous Milly-La-Forêt estate also inspired a magnificent, very colorful and very joyful jewelry collection which, like the fragrance from the Collection Privée, took on the beauties of nature.

Powdery flowers and mysterious woods for a luminous and wild Milly-La-Forêt

With Milly-La-Forêt, François Demachy reminds us, if it were still needed, that Dior's fragrances are above all inspired by the magnificent resources of nature. The Collection Privée does indeed play with rare ingredients such as ambergris or myrrh, but this does not prevent the perfumer from also using the late designer's favorite flowers.

Milly-La-Forêt opens on a wonderfully juicy mandarin essence, magnified by bergamot and citrus notes with fine tonicity. At the heart, neroli essence plays with jasmine to illuminate the garden of Milly-La-Forêt with radiant, generous sunshine, dusted with a few elegant irises and a few damp green notes. Finally, we leave the sunlit garden to enter the “forest” of the fragrance's deep notes, built around sandalwood and oakmoss. A few reassuring, protective white musks guide this woody walk…

For me, putting this place into a scent was like telling the story of a walk in the forest. I wanted the accord to be very enveloping, almost cottony and mysterious. François Demachy for Milly-La-Forêt, Collection Privée by Dior.