Introducing Givenchy Dahlia Noir With Riccardo Tisci
Any time I meet a woman who has never put Givenchy on her body before, I introduce her first to the romantic chiffon blouses with the ruffles, which are such a Givenchy nod, but in the hands of artistic director Riccardo Tisci, so unlike anything that Monsieur Givenchy ever did. Now Riccardo has released his first fragrance, Dahlia Noir. It is an enormous tribute to his love of women and his love of the romantic, but also his love of the mystery that every woman holds. And my sense is that women will be wearing this fragrance 120 years from now. It’s truly brilliant. I couldn’t wait to discuss it with Riccardo in New York.
Ken Downing and Riccardo Tisci
KD: As you know, we’re launching Givenchy Dahlia Noir exclusively at Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman. And we’re huge fans. Our customers love what you do with ready-to-wear, and they love your bag collection and what you do with shoes. And I was so excited to find out a little history of the fragrance because it’s so much of what you’ve brought to the DNA of Givenchy.
RT: It’s very personal, this fragrance.
Givenchy Dahlia Noir
KD: I love the idea of the dahlia being this feminine flower, but at the same time there’s a bit of an edge to it. Which is very much how you created your image and the fashion for the house of Givenchy.
RT: I wanted to do something that really represents my woman, who is very defined after six years. She’s masculine but feminine. Very romantic but at the same time very dark. And very severe but super dreamy. All these kinds of opposite things.
KD: Don’t you think fashion’s always better when there’s a little bit of a tug of war between the masculine and the feminine? When there’s no tug of war, it’s no longer fashion.
RT: My woman is like that. She’s so confident, so confident in her sexual attitude, she can play with a man’s wardrobe. And the same for a man. My man is so confident with his sexuality he can play with some [codes] of women’s wear. And the dahlia for me is a flower that really represents that. First because it’s a carte blanche.
KD: Well, the dahlia has no scent.
RT: This is what I’m saying. It doesn’t have a smell, which for me is very symbolic, very beautiful. The dahlia for me represents modernity because it is super romantic but at the same time very sharp.
KD: There’s a little bit of a wicked edge to it that keeps it very sensual, and there’s a bit of mystery to that flower because of the pointed petals.
RT: And [I chose] Noir because it doesn’t exist the black flower, in nature. But it’s a celebration of Givenchy. Because when I arrived six years ago, honestly I didn’t know why they cast me. I knew about Givenchy, but I knew mostly, like 99 percent of the world knows, about Audrey Hepburn, whom I respect and I love. Very iconic. When I arrive I discover the archive and understand the one thing [we have strongly in common,] which is the color black.
KD: Absolutely.
RT: I love black. It represents my style. You think about Givenchy, you think about the black cocktail dress. The most iconic thing everybody knows.
KD: There’s great mystique to black. A woman who arrives in a room wearing black—you want to know more about her.
RT: Like Dahlia Noir. Very romantic, very real, but at the same time very dreamy and secret. It was an amazing experience.
KD: You worked with LVMH perfumer François Demachy, who worked on many Dior fragrances.
RT: I’m so flattered he decided to do it, because he’s one of the most famous ones. Everyone was very surprised he said yes. He said to me, “What do you want from this perfume?” Very simple and naive question, but it means everything. For me, it’s very important that it’s fresh and young. I’m 36, I’ve been dropped in this big, amazing, dream experience at Givenchy. It’s a dream of any young designer to be a couturier, but to become a couturier takes time because the knowledge of things take time, experience.
KD: I think you’re an amazing couturier as well as an amazing pret-a-porter designer, but I love the humility you bring to it because it’s a really beautiful trait, and a lot of people don’t have that humility.
RT: I’m very honest with myself. I’m learning day by day. I’m the kind of person who listens a lot to people’s opinions.
KD: You’ve always been surrounded by women.
RT: Strong ones.
KD: Were your eight sisters and your mother involved when you were creating this amazing fragrance?
RT: Completely. My mom and sister, they’ve been amazing all my life. My father died and we lost everything financially, but there was love — big love and trust there. I’ve been surrounded by women warriors of love. Survivors. Very strong, very beautiful. Very strong women that at night, they take off their armor and become soft and sensual and very maternal in a way. The second question that [Mr. Demachy] asked me was, “What your mom wearing when you were a child?” And one of the biggest memories started from my mother wearing a scent of iris from Santa Maria Novella.
KD: It’s been around for 600 years. Centuries.
RT: And so basically it started everything from that, from my childhood. And then, one thing I try to do each season is really respect the founder of the house because Hubert de Givenchy wrote his moment in history. The rose, before Audrey Hepburn took the stage for Givenchy, was very iconic, so we start from that [also].
KD: There’s also a note of patchouli, which makes it super sexy.
RT: Patchouli making the sensuality, and then you have la rose and the iris which is making the powdery smell more flowery.
KD: I love the powdery quality of it, almost if dusted in a veil of powder… It’s a bit of a nod to the past, but it’s very rooted in today and feels very much like the future of where fragrance is going.
RT: It’s something very difficult to achieve because perfume is really like couture. Everything I do has to be couture, because you achieve more as a couture house. How can I bring couture to streets?
KD: The fragrance becomes the dream of the couture for any woman.
RT: Bravo. Perfume for me is the same process, because in a drop you have a lot of molecular [research,] so many hours of study to bring the emotion in the drop. The same thing when you’re making a jacket, or a couture dress, it’s so much time and so much research and elements and emotion in one unique piece…If you buy couture we mold the dress to perfection on the body. Couture is a service, it has to [fit like a glove] on the human body. Same thing [with the fragrance, which is personalized by the woman's chemistry.] It belongs to you.
KD: Your mother, your sisters, and young women are going to want to wear it as well. That is a true art, to be able to appeal to such an enormous range of women.
RT: It’s funny because by mom and sisters are the biggest critics of my style. They’re very honest with me, which I need. And they’re really in love with the perfume. That for me was the success. Actually the first women before anyone else, before the perfume people at Givenchy…
KD: You let your mother smell it first?
RT: Oh yeah.
KD: You know there are mothers throughout the world who have fallen in love with you because you brought it to your mother first.
RT: Oh really?
KD: Absolutely. Because a mother loves a son who loves his mother.
RT: I have to be honest with you, my mom is unhappy with the bottle. She’s 83, not the age probably, but she’s dreamy. She asked, “Why didn’t you do a flower?”
KD: I think the bottle is so chic. Even the box, it’s so Riccardo. It’s that beautiful blush, feminine, cool. When you open it up, it’s dark inside, it’s black, it’s mysterious again. Then you pull out the bottle with the black cap, it’s a bit of Art Deco, a bid to the past, but it still has a real modernity to it.
RT: The bottle and the video, which I directed with Fabien Baron and the pictures, the images were more a strange process… One day I go to the archive, and I notice in the archive most of the time the graphic is sharp. So I say bring it out, all this. Fabien designed the bottle, and he came out with this, which is a very classic way to do the bottle. Not organic, but sharp, symbolic, chic, very elegant, very untouchable in a way. I want tiny little details that people can discover. The name Dahlia Noir is not on the facade.
KD: It’s a secret. You have to lift the lid, and then there it is.
RT: You have to find it, which is itself very important to me. Took me a long time to finish the project. The video…I’m so proud of the video I can’t even describe. I chose my best friend and my muse Mariacarla Boscono to do the video.
KD: You’re kind of soulmates, no?
RT: Seventeen years of friendship. She’s my muse. And she shocked me, after 17 years. It’s quite a beautiful dream but very, very romantic, and you have all this flesh. This dress looks like a dahlia, and she moves with it.
KD: We want to thank all these amazing women in your life. The fact that your mother was involved charms me to no end. Thank you for spending time with us.
RT: The fact that you guys do an exclusivity for us…
KD: It means very much to us. Your handbags and ready-to-wear and accessories are so popular with our women, and this is going to be another, a new extension to her wardrobe. And I think it’s also going to reach women who might not have embraced Givenchy before. Bravissimo.
Givenchy Dahlia Noir is available at NeimanMarcus.com and Neiman Marcus stores as an eau de parfum, shower gel, body milk and candle.
