Courtesy of Dior
Courtesy of Dior
In an exclusive interview with Vogue Philippines, Francis Kurkdjian unpacks Cuir Saddle, a modern leather fragrance inspired by the iconic Dior Saddle Bag.
For Francis Kurkdjian, innovation is not reliant on a new ingredient, but on creative instinct. It is this instinct that led the Dior director of perfume creation to Cuir Saddle, the newest addition to La Collection Privée. For the master perfumer, the creation of a fragrance always begins with a story.
In this case, it was leather. “We were missing a leather silhouette, a leather note in the Maison. My idea was to fill that gap,” he shares. His vision was to translate the feeling of the Dior Saddle Bag, allured by the idea of something organic, intimate, and close to the body, something you wear and that becomes part of yourself.
“Like a Dior Saddle Bag clasped under the arm, where it embraces the lines of the body and caresses the skin, the perfume offers a sensual organic encounter with supple, scented leather, adopted as an extension of the self,” he explains. “The It bag created by John Galliano at the dawn of the 2000’s guided me towards an olfactory creation that defies convention.”
Leather, after all, has long been associated with defiance. Kurkdjian points to its place in history, when leather notes were worn by women in the 1920s and 1930s. “In Europe, we called them the garçonne,” he says, referring to the era’s emancipated women who challenged traditional femininity and fought for autonomy. Leather, in this sense, has always carried a quiet boldness.
At the same time, Kurkdjian acknowledges that leather fragrances can feel intimidating. “You need to have the kind of expertise to truly enjoy leather notes,” he admits. With Cuir Saddle, his goal was to open up the category, to offer a leather scent that feels wearable, inviting, and modern.
Creating a leather fragrance means engaging deeply with the foundations of perfumery. It requires both respect for tradition and the temptation to challenge it. With Cuir Saddle, Kurkdjian sought to situate himself within this ancestral legacy while also renewing it.
Far from the smoky, heavy, animalic interpretations typically associated with leather, he chose instead to soften the composition with luminous, contemporary floral facets.
He explains, “I wanted to move away from the connotations of heavy leather accords by modernizing their animal sensuality with an overdose of light. Smoky and woody notes are of course present, but they seem suffused with noble floral and musky notes.”
In perfumery, “leather” does not designate a fragrance family in itself, but rather a facet or accord (a blend of raw materials). As such, leather can appear across compositions, from Colognes to Chypres to Florals.
Historically, leather notes trace back to the profession of the glover-perfumer, which flourished in the 16th century after Catherine de’ Medici popularized perfumed gloves. In Grasse, master glover-perfumers developed a specialized savoir-faire, but by the late 18th century, rising taxes and foreign competition led to the disbandment of their guild. Fragrance production eventually overtook leather, positioning Grasse as the international capital of perfume by the 19th century.
“It’s a matter of balancing between tradition and modernity, a matter of respecting the heritage of the brand and yet understanding people’s need today and to see how you can combine both,” Kurkdjian tells Vogue Philippines. “You know, not everything can be expressed or explained. Sometimes it’s just a matter of creativity and creation and instinct.”
When asked why people wear fragrance at all, his answer is disarmingly simple: “They just enjoy it.”
While trend reports suggest that fragrance is today worn more as a form of self-expression than as a signal of status, Kurkdjian adds another layer. The brand you choose, he says, also becomes part of that expression, a reflection of who you are.
“I share many character traits with Christian Dior,” he reflects. “I love nature and flowers, I am insatiably curious about the world around me, and as a confirmed hedonist, I love life and its pleasures, but am also incorrigibly superstitious. These characteristics define me and are imbued in the Dior spirit of creation more than ever before.”
This philosophy extends to the object itself. For the travel-friendly Cuir Saddle format, the La Collection Privée bottle is dressed in supple leather with couture accents inspired by the Dior It Bag. The matte leather embraces the bottle like a second skin, rendered in a pale taupe hue drawn from Dior Couture’s soft palette.
Every detail is considered. The sculpted lid blends the clean lines of La Collection Privée with the saddler’s detailing of the Saddle bag. The result is a limited-edition leather case: tactile and designed to be taken everywhere, much like a Saddle clasped under the arm.
