RETRO - Dior Dioressence Concentre Pour le Bain - (1969 Guy Robert Formulation)

Dior Dioressence  - this is is the original bath perfume from 1969 that was created by Guy Robert. This one is nearly impossible to find. The 1979 version by Max Gavarry is the retro scent that most people are familiar with. There has always been some confusion regarding the fact that Dioressence originally was launched in 1969 and then was reformulated and relaunched in 1979 (the version by Gavarry) especially as Fragrantica has it listed as Guy Robert, 1979. The relaunch followed the general outlines of the original Dioressence, but it was made plusher and sweeter. The warm spices were enriched and the dense pungency of ambergris was substantially reduced.

Perfume shrine states "When I smell the original perfume created by Guy Robert in 1969, the relaunch from the 1970s and the current version, I feel as if I'm wearing three different perfumes-an ambery animalic chypre, a full-bodied spicy oriental and a pale green chypre."

Original 1969 Dioressence features top notes of aldehydes, bergamot and orange; middle notes of jasmine, violet, geranium, carnation, cinnamon, ylang-ylang & rosebud; and base notes of patchouli, orris root, oakmoss, benzoin, musk, stryax & Ambregris.

An excerpt from Perfume Shrine:

The advertisements read: "Exuberant. Smouldering. Uninhibited".  It was all that and more. Mink coats, cigarette-holders, lightly smeared eyeliner after a hard night. Dioressence launched as "le parfum barbare" (a barbaric perfume); the ready-to-wear fur collection by Dior in 1970 was orchestrated to give a powerful image of women as Venus in Furs. Commanding, aloof, demanding, even a dominatrix. The fragrance first launched as a bath oil product, reinforcing the name, i.e. Dior's Essence, the house's nucleus in liquid form; Dior wanted to write history. It later came as a stand-alone alcoholic perfume, the first composed by perfumer Guy Robert for Dior and history it wrote indeed. A new breed of parfum fourrure was born!"

The fragrance of Dioressence itself was the love affair of ambergris (a 100% natural essence at the time) with the original 1947 Miss Dior, a chypre animal perfume, itself laced with the animal notes of leathery castoreum in the base, so the two elements fused into each other most compatibly. Ambergris is lightly salty and nutty-smelling, creating a lived-in aura, while leather notes are sharper and harsher, especially when coming from castoreum, an animal essence from beavers with an intense almost death-like stink. The two give a pungent note.

The intensity of the animalistic accord in Dioressence was boosted even further by the copious carnation-patchouli chord (much like in Jean Carles sexy Tabu), spiced even further with cinnamics (cinnamon notes) and given a glossy glamour with lots of natural jasmine. The greenery over the oriental-chypre base notes is like the veneer of manners over the killer instinct. Still the Guy Robert treatment produced something that was totally French in style.