By Jessica Ye (Jessica Yap)
A little bee, a handful of balloons and a girl running through Paris. Miss Dior has never looked quite like this before.
The fragrance, which Christian Dior created in 1947, has now been turned into an animated short film by French animation studio Remembers, founded by Ugo Bienvenu and Félix de Givry. Rather than simply showing the perfume bottle and calling it a day, the film takes us back to the places, people and images that have been part of the Miss Dior story from the beginning.
And there is plenty to look at.
The story begins with a little bee leading Miss Dior through a world of roses, gardens and Parisian streets. Christian Dior’s beloved roses make an appearance, as does his sister Catherine, whose life and connection to flowers were closely tied to the origins of the fragrance. The journey eventually moves between Provence and Paris, bringing together the places that shaped the story of Miss Dior.
There are also the Dior details that longtime fans will recognise almost immediately. A giant pink bow appears. So does the house’s familiar houndstooth pattern. At one point, Miss Dior takes to the Parisian sky with a bunch of balloons, recalling one of the fragrance’s best-known advertising images.
It is almost like watching the history of the perfume being pulled out of an old scrapbook and set into motion.
The film goes all the way back to 1947, when Miss Dior was introduced alongside Christian Dior’s first couture collection and the New Look. From there, it moves through the story of the fragrance and its advertising history before arriving at the Miss Dior we know today.
What makes the film particularly interesting is how it was made.
The backgrounds were painted by hand in gouache using a Japanese technique dating back to the 1980s. It is an unusually laborious method and one that is rarely used today, giving the film its textured backgrounds and slightly old-fashioned quality.
That hand-painted look suits Miss Dior rather nicely. The film does not try to make the fragrance look futuristic. Instead, there are flowers, painted skies, little flashes of light, Paris rooftops and that enormous pink bow, all moving together like pages from an illustrated storybook.
There is something rather charming about seeing a perfume with almost 80 years of history treated this way.
Miss Dior has been photographed, advertised and reinterpreted countless times. This time, it gets to run through the streets, float above Paris and wander through Christian Dior’s garden.
And somehow, that feels like a rather fitting way to tell its story.
Watch the new Miss Dior animated film here.
