Dior’s iconic ‘Saddle’ bag has been transformed into a perfume

The ‘Saddle’ bag became an emblem of early 2000s style when it made its debut at John Galliano’s Dior S/S 2000 ready-to-wear show, and now, thanks to perfumer Francis Kurkdjian, the emblematic 'it bag' has been translated into an equally innovative fragrance.

‘For me, the “Saddle” bag is a very inspiring story,’ Kurkdjian tells Wallpaper* at a preview of the fragrance in Paris. ‘It’s almost like an accessory that becomes part of your body, and from that feeling, I started thinking about something very sensual, almost a nude leather. Something very skin-like.’

Cuir Saddle: Dior’s latest fragrance is inspired by the ‘Saddle’ bag

That approach is what led Kurkdjian to develop an entirely new approach to leather perfumery, which tends to be smoky and animalistic, with the kind of olfactory profile lovers of tobacco or rich, musky scents are drawn to. With Cuir Saddle, Kurkdjian has not entirely eliminated those smoky and woody notes, but has tempered them with florals and soft musks to create what he calls a ‘trompe l'oeil’ fragrance or ‘skin fragrance’, designed to subtly enhance the scent of your own body chemistry. Just ike the bag that inspired it, Cuir Saddle fuses to the body so that you almost forget you are wearing it at all.

The perfume is the latest addition to ‘La Collection Privée’, a range of luxury fragrances that use scent as a medium to explore the history of the house, by reconfiguring aesthetics from the archives to reflect the olfactory tastes of the present.

When it came to Cuir Saddle, Kurkdjian was not only thinking about Dior’s history, but the unexpected history of perfumed leather. Since ancient times, people have tried to mask the animalic smell of leather with notes of rose, musk, spices and the like. Catherine de’ Medici made history with her perfumed leather gloves, and scented leather took on new dimensions in the Roaring Twenties when the Russians arrived in Paris with their famous Russian Leather, which was finished with birch oil, lending it a distinctive scent. It is the mixture of the animal hide and the methods for perfuming it that have led to our present-day understanding of leather smells. For the new perfume, Kurkdjian wanted to upend this tradition with soft notes and the addition of synthetic molecules. ‘In this sense, Cuir Saddle seemed to present a very modern challenge,’ he says.

At a time when gourmand fragrances are dominating the market, Cuir Saddle presents an innovative, forward-looking alternative – a refined scent that suits the contemporary taste for lighter perfumes while still going against the grain. ‘Leather has always carried an idea of sensuality. It’s often long-lasting, and there’s something noble and expensive about it. But it’s not a very popular category. It’s more for connoisseurs. Leather notes are often raw, scratchy, old-school, which is exactly why we wanted softness here.’

Dior’s Cuir Saddle fragrance is available now at dior.com