Sakura

Sakura came out in 2018, when Dior brought La Collection Privée and its other creations together under the name Maison Christian Dior. The collection then counted about twenty fragrances, a dozen of them new, along with candles and soaps sold in dedicated boutiques.

A spring in Japan

François Demachy recounts discovering the cherry blossom in Japan one spring day: tiny and fragile, it releases, in his words, a scent of astonishing presence that evokes thousands of trees in bloom.

He says he wanted to pay tribute to it by interpreting its tender scent with rosy nuances. He also mentions a bouquet of sakura in his hotel room, whose smell obsessed him to the point of turning it into a fragrance.

Christian Dior’s Japan

Today the house links the fragrance to the couturier’s taste for Japanese aesthetics. Christian Dior recalled gazing at length, in his childhood home in Granville, at the fresco his mother Madeleine had commissioned for the staircase: a flight of two herons.

The cherry blossom, a symbol of fleeting beauty, reminded him of that decor. The house presents Sakura as a unisex fragrance and also offers a hydrating lotion from the same line.