“Gold is cold, diamonds are dead,” purred Charlize Theron in the mid-aughts, as she stripped off her jewelry and ball gown during her first ad spot touting Dior’s J’Adore eau de parfum. “C'est ca que j'adore.”
For the next 20 years, Theron graced TV screens, billboards, shopping mall displays, airport digital signage, and more wearing all manner of glittering, draped dresses and whispering J’Adore Dior as she went. During those two decades, it became hard to spot the actor’s signature platinum pixie without envisioning it carrying a floral scent, or to enter a shopping destination without seeing one of the brand’s ever-present advertisements. This past June, she ended her long reign when Rihanna was announced as the scent’s new ambassador.
In 1999, when the fragrance was crafted by Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein veteran Calice Becker, supermodel Carmen Kass became its first spokeswoman. “I can’t resist temptation,” she said, slipping into a golden pool as a male singer groaned “Oh, baby” over the ad’s backing track. J’Adore, she whispered as the video faded, instantly establishing the new launch as the tantalizing counterpart to Dior’s already successful Miss Dior perfume.
Miss Dior is a sweet pink fragrance launched shortly after the New Look in 1947—it comes wrapped in a bow. J’Adore comes dripping in gold and innuendo. The teardrop-shaped bottle, a take on the female form snaked by gold rings, was envisioned by furniture designer Hervé Van der Straeten. It’s been riffed on through the years, most recently for the L’Or J’adore launch under current Creative Director Francis Kurkdjian, who added a clear top and solid gold neck, as well as a punch of orange to the concentrate.
“I was very close to the original conception in back 1999,” Kurkdjian told Harper’s Bazaar last September. “It was created in NYC and I worked with Calice at the time. Its code name was ‘Diana’, as of course Princess Diana was very close to the house.” Twenty-five years on, the fragrance adorns a kind of contemporary American royalty: singer, businesswoman, and all-around icon Rihanna.
“Christian Dior would most definitely have adored her,” said parfums CEO Véronique Courtois in the announcement. Speculation surrounding a collaboration began when the singer attended the brand’s couture show earlier this year—a tell for those who remember Rihanna’s debut as Dior’s first Black ambassador in a 2015 Secret Garden campaign under then-Creative Director Raf Simmons.
The fashion week appearance was followed by walking the grounds of Versailles with photographer Steven Klein, the man behind the singer’s past Dior campaign as well as her covers for V Magazine, British Vogue, W, and more. Last week, the first look at the Klein’s latest snapshots was released.
In the gilded halls of the French landmark, Rihanna sits bare except for neck-spanning strings of gold pearls (an ode to the bottle’s original design), a golden shimmer across her skin that is likely the result of one of Fenty’s many body luminizers, and, one can imagine, the scent of L’Or J’adore. In an interview with Vogue, the singer revealed that her mother used to work in a perfume shop. “She used to bring home the J’adore testers when they were almost empty, so there was always a bottle in the house. I have always loved this perfume.”
Will her collaboration last as long as her predecessor’s? One year? Or 10? The brand is only gearing up by dropping this first hint, what is deems “the beginning of a new dream.” Rihanna, for her part, is ready to combine J’Adore’s signature blend with “my world, my story, my roots, as well as my creativity, and my own femininity.”
