Dior Cosmetics throughout the years has evolved and grown through two bankruptcies and several scandals to become the brand loved by millions today. But through all of this, it's been much more influential than you'd think. Dior Cosmetics actually began with the Miss Dior perfume, which came along with the founding of his maison in 1947. His debut fashion collection was an incredible triumph and the Eau de Toilette was an extension, a sensory extension, of this new opulent liberated woman, free from the poverty that World War II had brought so many, and was named after his sister who had personally fought against the Nazis. The perfume was said to be made when Christian Dior asked perfumers Jean Charles and Paul Vacher to create a fragrance that smells like the feeling of falling in love, something that paired perfectly with his romantic debut collection. As the perfume came into stores about a year later in 1948, it was joined by another two perfumes.
L'Enfort and Diorama, which were also launched as the first collection became available. So these trio of fragrances were seriously successful. So much so that Dior knew that he had a serious moneymaker on his hands and didn't want to waste this as an opportunity. So, contrary to the norm at the time, another year later in 1949, Dior licensed out the production of the perfume in regional centres that would allow the perfume to go worldwide.
While the French Chambre Couture accused Dior of cheapening the industry, his decision actually proved to be extremely profitable. Dior, knowing the potential for another major cash cow for his business, wanted to further capitalize on all three of his products, and so the Diorama and Lanfort perfumes would be the first Dior cosmetics to warrant their own marketing to forge a brand positioning completely separate from the fashion line. Which of course by that I mean that though Mist Dior Perfume did have an advertising budget, it was still very heavily tied to the new look and that specific debut collection. Brand positioning in general for cosmetics is exceptionally important because it's the main selling point of the product often. Companies sell the aspiration or idea much more so than the chemical product, partially because chemistry is hard to explain, but also largely because it has the largest impact on sales as customers can choose the company with whom they have shared values or aspire to have shared values with.
This is commonly known today, but this was a fairly novel idea for the time, when makeup was almost formulaic to teach women how to and how not to do their makeup. So to expand on this new creative perspective, Dior had a very small limited range of lipsticks produced in 1950, and after seeing the success with that, in 1953 would expand on his cosmetic products with his next massive hit product, the Dior Rouge. The product came in a kit with two cases, one for the vanity and one to carry on the go, as well as a set of refills for the case, which you can see here as Christian Dior gifts a rouge kit to actress Jane Russell in 1954. The product that is still with us today would continue to be hugely successful, and along with the perfumes, of which there are now several, were some of the biggest money makers for the company. They even had a dedicated area within his boutique filled with all the different sized bottles for the perfumes. However, after his death in 1957, that for the fashion brand threatened the company closure, actually for the cosmetics, would improve sales quite dramatically.
The lipstick specifically was exceptionally successful, and by 1960 had already expanded into including a very wide colour range for the time. But the company wasn't done with cosmetic expansion and innovating for the luxury space just yet. In 1962, Dior became the first couture house to launch a nail colour line that expanded on their sensual brand image with this sophisticated, highly pigmented shades.
But it wasn't all growth upon growth, because just a few years later, in the mid-60s, Dior's cosmetics line had been plateauing. Probably thanks in part to the death of the owner and in part thanks to Marc Bowen who'd taken over from Yves Saint Laurent at this point. Yves Saint Laurent wasn't necessarily a successful designer for Dior if you look over all of his collections and Mark Bowen was less of a divisive designer for the Couture collections so between the two of them that just meant that there was less buzz around the brand which in turn affected brand perception and therefore the cosmetics.
If you are interested more in the Yves Saint Laurent and Mark Bowen time at Dior I do have a fashion channel that goes through all of that which I will link here as well as at the end of the video but meanwhile with the cosmetics though they were still trying to create new and profitable products for the brand, which included the successful launch of Eau Sauvage, the first Dior fragrance for men in 1996, though of course men's products do not sell quite like the women's, so this, though successful, wasn't the massive push that the brand actually needed to come out of this slump. So with stagnating sales being the first, first warning signs of a slippery slope, they knew they needed a remedy. In 1967, Dior would hire their first beauty image director, an already famed makeup artist, Serge Luton, whose work in magazines like Vogue were a revelation in makeup at the time.
He released his first complete collection for Dior in 1969 as a full range of products, from powders, blush, block mascara, eyeliners, tints and blushes, but most notably eyeshadows, which were a standout from the collection and featured him as the most popular makeup artist of all time. heavily in popular photography at the time. In fact, Luton's use of imagery in magazines or in advertising for the Dior eyeshadows, nail polish, lipstick shades, eyeliners, rouges and powders is one of the main ways that the company differentiated themselves from other brands of the day as they positioned themselves as the creative, more artistic brand on the market.
that still had the quality product that a name like Dior could provide. A positioning even taken to perfumes, as seen in their perfume adverts for the launch of Diorella in 1972. By 1973, Dior Cosmetics would go on to make even more history, as for the first time ever, a celebrity would be used in cosmetic advertising for a campaign called Les Aventures de Dior, which was made to promote their smoky eye colours, dark nail polishes and dark lipstick shades. You might not be able to tell, from this but this is actually Angelica Huston who at the time was an up-and-coming actor and later was famed for being Morticia Adams in the Addams Family but before her fame in acting was actually a successful model so despite her not being famous enough yet for the people at Dior to actually know who she is it's still a great indicator of Vuitton's talent for understanding and creating value for Dior. By 1978 Lund's aesthetic had evolved with the times and he became fascinated with artworks from previous decades.
For example, his campaign Les Fantastiques was inspired by Edgar Degas'La Léquine Jeune from 1884 as well as early 20th century impressionist painters like Monet, which I think is also seen in their 1979 Dior Essence perfume ads that really captivate this colourful vision for the Dior brand that he had over his 13-year career with them. A career which only really came to an end after Boussac, their parent company, went bankrupt after making several bad investments. I do say this in that Dior fashion video that I talked about before, so again I'm going to link that at the end if you do want more information about this, because at this point Dior Dior was worth almost 175 million by the end of the 70s, which is almost 1.3 billion euros today, and yet would still fall victim to a very long and publicised downfall of Boussac, a parent company who was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1979. So, in 1980, under the new owners, the Willow Brothers, Lutens was replaced by a man named Taian, who would begin his career basically tasked by Dior to continue what Lutens was doing successfully, simply because the Willow brothers had no experience in luxury goods to know what was the best thing to do. So Taian followed in the footsteps of the colourful, impressionist-inspired visuals of Lutens, just in a more modern manner that attracted the women and men of the 80s.
But that's not to say that Taian wasn't exceptionally talented, because he obviously is, it's just that the business was failing, and at first he was tasked with trying to help the company not go under. So under the Willow Brothers, Tyone and Dior managed to release Jewels, which is a fragrance for men in 1980, which has a bit of a cult following today, but nowhere near enough of an impact at the time for it to have saved the dying business. The Willow Brothers soon went bankrupt and began to put Dior into administration, which probably would have killed the brand altogether if it wasn't for Bernard Arnault, who along with his investment company came to save the company. He appointed himself as the CEO and managing director of Dior later that year, and in 1985 restructured the entire business as a holdings company to create the Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy LVMH that we know today.
Dior was already profitable as a company too, thanks in part to Lewton's legacy and Tyane's ability to reinvent that for the 80s woman, so Tyane- did stay on to continue their creative work under LVMH, with whom they launched several highly pigmented makeup products in the latter half of the 80s, though you can see a huge shift in the aesthetic of the adverts coming into 89. Together they also launched many of the company's best selling perfumes as well, which were now also accompanied by film advertisements like this one for June or this one for poison. This continuation of Lund's work with Tyane's handwriting was successful at concreting that brand identity for Dior Cosmetics that was malleable enough to work for all of these new products to target a wide range of women, all while keeping them believable as from the same company. This was done largely in the continuation of the colourful art-inspired imagery that the company had been putting out. For example, In Blue, which is Taillan's 1993 beauty editorial for German Vogue, he was then also inspired by Pierre Mondrian's composition with Double Line and Blue from 1935, as well as other modern artists who used colour as the central element of their work. Meanwhile, the success of this creative image was about to reach the Dior Couture and Mainline collections with the addition of John Galliano in Spring Summer 97 Couture, who, pre-scandal, was heralded as the best creative mind in the world.
And really, Galliano's Dior paired so well with this creative image for the cosmetics that they've been championing for decades, as well as with their adoption of Pat McGrath who was doing the makeup for the couture shows. This really was the golden age of the Dior fashion line as well as the cosmetics world. The fashion line largely was what was getting customers through the door because it was so highly publicized, for which the Pat McGrath looks were able to hold their own so successfully that it drew attention to the makeup line in the first place. and they had some incredible perfume hits for the company, namely J'adore in 1999, which was released directly off the back of one of the most successful Dior collections ever, Autumn Winter 01. By this point Dior as a company was now well back on its feet and one of the most successful design houses on the market.
They'd slowly been changing their packaging too to be less and less creative or imaginative so that it appealed to the widest range of people. Effectively, Dior was evolving from being this exciting, fresh cosmetics brand to being a legacy cosmetics brand that people can depend on for an unchanging product. They hired Francois Demarchi to become the perfume creator for Dior in 2006 and really started to focus more on celebrity endorsements to sell their product.
More so than ever before with the addition of TV adverts for makeup, which I believe began in 2007 with this Monica Bellucci ad for Dior Rouge, who was then later replaced by Natalie Portman, who became the face of most of the Dior cosmetic lines, as well as the Miss Dior Cherie perfume, while Jude Law was the face of Dior Homme fragrances and Charlize Theron was the face of J'adore Dior in their most famous perfume ad to date. However, After the infamous Galeano scandal in 2011, where he spat racist rhetoric at two women in a Parisian cafe, the entire brand was in jeopardy once again. Natalie Portman, the face of Dior Cosmetics, who herself was a Jewish woman, spoke up against Galeano because she wanted nothing to do with them. She cut ties with the brand which prompted Dior to officially fire him, and Dior had to spend many, many months trying to rebuild their reputation. But because they dealt with the situation quickly, it luckily didn't have a long-lasting effect.
However, the rebuild really didn't start for the cosmetics line, who did remain profitable in this time, until around 2013, so two years later, when the after-effects of the scandal started to die down. and cosmetics became one of the largest growth areas for the company. This was then followed by more celebrity endorsement by Robert Patterson in 2013, which if I remember correctly, people thought was a very strange choice at the time. But he was a replacement for Jude Law, who continued his contract all the way up until this point. And then this really hit a new high in 2014, when Tyann was replaced by Peter Phillips.
Peter Phillips was a huge name in the business of cosmetics and was best known for reviving Chanel's cosmetics line with his creative approach to makeup that often saw him incorporating different materials like feathers into his work. With Peter Phillips, we see that he was a saw a new take on the colourful look for Dior. Still creative, yes, but significantly more neutral tones than previously used by Tyane or Luton, which I think is due to the rise of Korean makeup trends that do tend to have more of a neutral look, though I could be wrong.
This was then furthered by new perfume creation director Francis Cote de Jean, who together with Philips and Dior championed huge celebrity ambassador contracts like with Rihanna, Angela Baby, Cara Delevingne, and Jisoo. and most notably, Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp had been a brand ambassador for Dior Sauvage since 2015, when in 2020 he was brought to court in the UK for a libel trial that ended up ruling against Depp, allowing the son to call him a wife-beater.
Following this, was heavily advised to drop Depp from being the face of the perfume, but they refused and kept Depp on as a spokesperson. In fact, the sales actually increased during his trial and the only ad that was dropped by him was in 2017 that had him in a campaign called We Are The Land, which portrayed cultural insensitivity to Native Americans because of the clothing, dance, and then the name of the perfume Sauvage, literally meaning savage in French. So probably for the best that that was dropped.
but at the time Dior was widely accused of just wanting profits from the Depp case and kind of using him for exposure. Though Dior really would have the Last laugh in 2022 when Depp and his accuser Amber Heard went to court in America. I don't think anyone could escape the mega pint of entertainment from the court case on Twitter or TikTok because Amber Heard and her legal team ended up looking so terrible and it was widely believed that she was lying even before the court made their verdict. Because of this, articles like these ones mostly praised Dior for standing by the man that was now being proved to be innocent.
Their sales of Sauvage kept climbing and climbing and climbing until Depp was proved to be innocent in the court of law and Dior sales skyrocketed. By this point the fragrance that is $160 a bottle was selling every three seconds making a total of $4.5 million in sales per day and becoming the best-selling perfume in the world. Financially this really has been the absolute peak of Dior cosmetics and even though it isn't sustainable nor is it perhaps wise as a marketing move to base future sales on controversies, it helped transform the public perception of Dior Cosmetics into a company that was loyal to their team. Which brings us pretty much to today.
Dior Cosmetics are now really a heritage brand, but a widely loved heritage brand. They started, albeit slowly, to into the online space, even making their first apt try on lipstick shades in 2021. I don't see Dior cosmetics going anywhere anytime soon, but I would love to see them bring back their creative makeup heritage started by Luton to social media a tad more. which I think if they do reissue the 2016 Dior Art of Color book that really is the history of Dior cosmetics, they would have a great success with social media campaigning for that. Thank you so much for watching, check out the Rise and Fall of Too Faced here, or check out my fashion channel that has a video on the rise and rise of Dior as a fashion house.