If you are a Chanel No.5 girl, you are very lucky. Created in 1921 and still the same scent to this day. Of course, this perfume has been "tweaked" over the years, because certain natural ingredients were replaced by synthetic ones, or because certain ingredients have simply been added to the list of prohibited substances. However, the scent is still one of the most recognizable in the world and I believe that most people have not even noticed the difference in raw materials.
However, if you fell in love with Dior's new creation, Miss Dior Cherie, sometime in or after 2005, then you're not so lucky. I think everyone knows the debacle of Miss Dior Cherie or Miss Dior. Miss Dior was originally released in 1947. It is an old school type of scent, chypre floral with an earthy mossy note. A wonderful scent, but vintage. It still exists, although it is now called Miss Dior Originale. The perfume is still super popular today and I understand that Dior wanted to release a more modern version for the modern generation. I also understand that this became Miss Dior Cherie, a sweet patchouli scent, a genre that became extremely popular around 2005. It became an instant hit.
It is also understandable that a successor would come in 2012. Perhaps certain raw materials were banned. What is difficult to understand is that this 2012 version became a completely different scent. No popcorn or sweetness. Suddenly we're going from a fruitchouli to a chypre floral patchouli perfume. How can the original have existed since 1947 and why is the successor already being changed after 7 years? It was certainly not due to lacking popularity, Miss Dior Cherie 2005 is still highly praised and sought after to this day. It is certainly incomprehensible that the name subsequently changes to Miss Dior. After all, we already have a Miss Dior from 1947. Then another reformulation takes place in 2017, this time the scent is more woody. Then a completely unrecognizable Miss Dior rises in 2021, which can almost be described as slightly fruity. Too bad for the 16-year-old girl who chose her signature perfume in 2005 and was served something different no fewer than 4 times until she was 32. While mother and grandmother had been wearing the original Miss Dior all their lives. That didn't happen to the girl who chose Chanel Coco Mademoiselle...
However, Dior is not the only one. Over the years, many perfumes have been reformulated. Company takeovers, restriction of ingredients, it is understandable that some perfumes lost their intensity or were slightly changed, but making something completely different is incomprehensible in my opinion. In fact, you might as well discontinue a perfume and launch a completely new scent.
Quite recently I heard the story of Chopard perfumes. The company changed hands again and both the perfumes and their appearance were given a new look. Not a very big problem, if it weren't for the fact that their bestseller of all times Wish has now become something completely different. Everyone knows Chopard Wish, the blue perfume in a diamond-shaped bottle from 1997. A gourmand patchouli born in the Thierry Mugler Angel era. One loved Angel at the time, the other loved Wish. Angel has also undergone its reformulations, but is still unmistakably Angel. However, Wish has undergone an unrecognizable transformation. While the scent apparently already had to be changed some time ago and suddenly became lilac in color, it is now completely green. So if you buy Wish now you get the same diamond with a a ditch green perfume in it. To make matters worse, the scent appears to be much weaker and the sweet vanilla patchouli scent now suddenly appears to have a heavy powdery tone. Gone fan base....
I keep wondering why perfume houses like Yves Saint Laurent and Chanel remain faithful to their iconic scents and why it seems necessary to others to give their perfumes a completely different identity...
Judith, founder