Granville (Christian Dior) - new exclusive fragrance review

Granville, the new exclusive fragrance from "La Collection Couturier Parfumeur", is Dior's parfum paysage, a sentimental mirror of the surrounding nature embalming the pink villa. But this is not the garden and the precious collection of flowers that gave birth 50 years ago to the colors and patterns of the New Look era. François Demachy captures the spirit of the north, the abrupt coastal landscape, the sea and forest surrounding the house where Christian Dior was born. The perfume is cold, aromatic and bitter like a pine forest and a field covered with thyme, the opposite of what we perceive today as the sensual facet of Dior and its exuberant feminity. It is also the opposite of Filles en aguilles, the unusual creation of Serge Lutens built on the dark facet of resinous conifers. Granville explores the freshness of pine, thyme and mandarin, tonalities rarely found together in fine fragrances It is an interpretation of lightness which becomes almost medicinal because of the camphor-like notes, and opposed to the resinic depth of Serge Lutens. The aromatic bouquet is enhanced by rosemary and strong black pepper that contrasts with the lemony freshness. Dry and bitter, with a certain harshness obtained by the contrast between the aromatic facet and the lemony cologne structure, Granville evokes the tailored suits of Dior, their structured line and their masculine, almost brutal texture.

The drydown reveals strong woody notes hidden under the freshness: dry mosses, sandalwood, maybe vetiver and fir balsam, pine absolute, a delicately sweet honeyed resin and of course, the orange flower and a delicate musk. The first seconds reveal through the aromatic cologne freshness a basil facet that recalls Eau Sauvage. This time not subtle, refined or alluring, the creation of Demachy is purely "sauvage" and smells like raw nature. To me it is the scent of thyme in its raw state near the sea, before the storm. After one day, the blotter clearly evokes the last minutes of a Dior masterpiece, with shades of hay and jasmine in a velvety woody landscape. François Demachy takes the thyme molecule found in only one citrus material where it is surrounded by a bitter orange flower molecule and magnifies the accord. This approach, where a small detail is amplified and the proportions are reversed, is similar to what Christian Dior used to do in fashion. The couturier took small details like buttons, cuffs, pockets and made them 5 or 10 times bigger. The decoration became an essential design element. This extreme harshness, with thyme and wintergreen notes, sometime a part in the design of exotic flowers, is dosed to its extreme aromatic pungency. This paysage perfume shows Granville in the most unexpected way. If the pink villa gave the shade used for the defunct Diorissimo and the delicate flowers became the crucial theme of another new perfume, this creation shows us the forest near the sea, the cypress, pine, thuya and the wild grasses, all important elements in the top note of chypre leather creations of the 50's. This unusual bitter aromatic note recalls the early 1900's when the pungent methyl salycilate was a common ingredient in fashionable perfumes.
"I wanted to create a fragrance that was not only aromatic, since the property is overflowing with pine trees, but also very sharp and extremely fresh, to evoke the wind gusts and the waves that perpetually strike the rocks. In Granville, nature is all but calm. This fragrance is the scent of the wind that blows there." François Démachy

"With its fine sandy beach and full range of sporting and musical entertainment, Granville found itself rejoicing in the title of "the little Monaco of the North" and became the meeting place for the best society, who flocked there year in and year out, complete with a full entourage of trunks, children and nannies." - Marie France Pochna - Christian Dior: The Biography

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Fragrance is the 8th Art - Octavian Coifan - Le Parfum est le 8ème Art