Miss Dior Esprit de Parfum

 Miss Dior. Didn't think I'd ever like this, let alone fall in love with it & put it in heavy rotation. I had tired the vintage EDC and EDT and they weren't memorable, they seemed old & stuffy.  Prior to sniffing the ESdP the name "Miss Dior" sort of conjured up images of debutantes, very upper-class uptight (somewhat stuffy, ah, maybe a stuck up woman) well manicured (perhaps what we'd call today as "high maintenance", or someone who always looks perfect) old fashioned young women from back in the day. Pastel fluffy prom dresses with matching corsages. Perfect, pretty and not sexy. Maybe a Stepford Wife.  Am I going way off base here? I think I am, but....

Miss Dior was created in 1947 by Paul Vacher (creator of the line of Le Galion fragrances, and Sortilege, Diroling, and Arpege, none of which I'm familiar with-sorry to say, but I'm working on it ; ) and Jean Carles (of Shocking de Schiaparelli ,Ma Griffe, and Tabu fame, which I am familiar with) who, at the time was completely anosmic.  He compared his anosmia to Beethoven's deafness. Amazing. Christian Dior's instructions to the perfumers was to "Create a fragrance that is like love." Okay. Named by Mitzah Bricard (Dior's muse) when she saw Christian’s sister Catherine and exclaimed,"Here's Miss Dior!" Something along those lines. A liter of the extrait was sprinkled on a weekly basis in Dior's first boutique in 1947. Yikes, how would you like to have worked in there? Being around it that much would be too much of a good thing for me.

I picked up an old Esprit de Parfum and watch out world, here I come! Heavy, heavy thick leather, a lipstick leather with honey, or something in there giving it a semi-sweet edge-as you can tell I have trouble picking out notes, especially florals. Maybe it's the galbanum giving it the sweet edge in the beginning.....where was I? Lipstick leather, sweetened with honey (or sumpthin') with mossy vanilla and amber. A cross between a chypre and an oriental, or maybe you'd call it a combination of both?  I'm wondering if my bottle is from the 80's because it wears like a powerhouse perfume of that era, like Montana's Parfum de Peau, Balengencia's Rumba, Gucci 3, Krizia's Teatro Alla Scala. And I didn't drown myself in it to get that effect, it just went that way. Just a spritz on the wrists and on the neck is enough to be very noticeable.

All this with an animalic background. No civet, musk or castoreum in the notes, but something strikes me as a teensy bit skanky. There's something earthy-earthy as in Revlon's Intimate, which crossed my mind while spritzing myself with Miss D today. But not dirty skanky, a clean skank. Just warm and earthy. Sexual. Hmmmmmm........

Miss Dior to me is less of a debutante and more like a cougar. It brings to mind images of a sophisticated, mature and sultry woman, like Ann Bancroft as Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate. The original cougar, she even donned the animal prints from coat to underwear. BTW, Ann Bancroft was only 36 when she played Mrs. Robinson, who was twice as old as Benjamin's 21. That's NOT old. Sheesh, I am older than Mrs. Robinson. Oh, never mind. Let's talk about art, shall we?

Miss Dior is yummy, heavy, sexy, sexual, vampy. It wears well on me & goes especially well with my leather jacket and my leopard coat, of course.

 Miss Dior Esprit de Parfum vs. the EDT and EDC versions
Since becoming very acquainted with Miss Dior ESdP I compared it to the EDT and EDC I had of it. Both the EDT and EDC start off differently to the ESdP,  they lack the opening  zing and spunk, but they were opened-long ago-splash-bottles, their top notes were probably gonzo, so I'll forgive them.  My ESdP was a new in sealed package find of the century! Must have been sitting on the back of the shelf for years, maybe 30 years or more. It was tucked way in the back behind some newer Diors and EDCs. Anyway, the EDT and EDC eventually dried down to the amber/leather/slightly vanilla-)ish, animalistic drydown of my ESdP, but they weren't as rich or full bodied as the ESdP.  The EDC seemed to have more vanilla than the EDT. Both were lighter fragrances compared to the ESdP.

I have no idea how the current formulations smell. There are so many Miss Dior Chere flankers I'd have to rummage through them all to find a regular Miss Dior on the counter, right? I dunno. I am a little curious about the current, but I'm not going out of my way to try it.