15 October 2024 |
Creative perfumer director, Francis Kurkdjian, redefines masculinity with a highly concentrated, long-wearing skin scent.
There are a few things you should know before visiting Rattlesnake Canyon in Page, Arizona. First, you need a reservation for the guided 60-minute walk through the breathtaking maze of textured sandstone, its otherworldly curves, which glow an ambery shade of terracotta, carved by thousands of years of water and wind. Maintained by members of the Navajo Nation, the canyon’s terrain is described as “moderate” in diffi culty, but children under the age of eight and pregnant women are not allowed, according to the fi ne print. The policy likely has nothing to do with endurance and everything to do with the narrow switchbacks that require mild contortion in order to make your way from the mouth of the canyon to a well-positioned ladder at its end. Oh, and don’t go during a rainstorm. “Flash fl oods can happen in an instant,” my guide, Joseph Secody, warns on a recent visit, describing how heavy rains can rush through the canyon’s tiny crevices that are hard enough to navigate on a blazing-hot, dry day in June. Water can be wild, even in the desert.
It’s an idea that fascinated the perfumer Francis Kurkdjian as he began analyzing the provenance of Sauvage, Parfums Christian Dior’s bestselling men’s scent that is inspired by the idea of vast, undeveloped landscapes. “In the desert, water becomes a precious element,” Kurkdjian says. “Because when it rains, a few hours later you can have life.” Recontextualizing this kind of invigorating freshness as a conduit between heaven and parched earth offered Kurkdjian the perfect narrative framework for Sauvage Eau Forte, a new fragrance out this month.
Kurkdjian, who has immersed himself in Dior’s archive since joining the French house as perfume creation director in 2021, is well versed in the Sauvage legacy. “From 1966 to 1995, Eau Sauvage was the men’s bestseller in Europe, but it never made it in the U.S. because it was too citrusy,” Kurkdjian explains of the modern- day fragrance franchise’s predecessor in a heavily air-conditioned room at Amangiri in Utah, a few hours post-canyon adventure. “They tried twice to make it happen. It didn’t work either time.”
But in 2015, when Dior riffed on the cologne-like original to create Sauvage, an eau de toilette with an entirely different structure that tempered those strong citrus notes with spices, resins, and woods, it achieved near-instant icon status. By 2021, it was selling one bottle every three seconds. Part of cracking the U.S. market was tapping into the zeitgeist of the time, which had made space for a new take on what a men’s scent could be, Kurkdjian suggests. “Sauvage is all about self-seduction,” he explains, referring to the fragrance’s aspirational ad campaigns that have starred high-profi le male actors and athletes, in wide-open natural spaces, without the sexualized constructs that typically guide fragrance visuals.
Sauvage has since grown into a range of four fragrances, including an eau de parfum, a parfum, as well as an elixir, the heady 2021 iteration that introduced its strongest concentration yet. But its fi fth, Eau Forte, perhaps stays truest to Sauvage’s efforts to redefi ne the idea of masculinity that is core to its brand equity. “It doesn’t give that kind of macho male impression. It’s a fresher, cleaner, sexy thing,” Kurkdjian says. He used a revolutionary high-pressure nano-emulsion technique, that is patented by Dior, to suspend fragrance oils—warm spices, an overdose of rich elemi resin, and a diffused lavender note—in a water base, completely devoid of alcohol. The result is a highly concentrated, long-wearing milky blend that melts into skin instantly in a single spritz.
Kurkdjian, who has become a star on #perfumetok thanks to Baccarat Rouge 540—the viral hit from his namesake brand—has a kinship with Gen Z, the generation that has helped propel the idea of perfume as a genderless proposition. When asked if Sauvage is for everyone, Kurkdjian concedes that Eau Forte, with its nuanced water base, is the one formula in the franchise that most easily slides back and forth on the gender binary. “It was important to make this step, otherwise we keep doing the same thing,” he says as I reapply a light veil of the fragrance onto my own pulse points. Adds Kurkdjian, “At this point in my career, it’s not just creating the perfume itself that is interesting, but the creative process required to arrive at the idea.”
