Sonnet I
From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty's rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed'st thy light'st flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.
Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament
And only herald to the gaudy Spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content
And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding.
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.
Shakespeare chose to write his first Sonnet about beauty, vanity and self-obsession and a plea to leave something substantial in this world before death. How pertinent this poem is for our youth-and-beauty-obsessed times!
Christian Dior Miss Dior seems to carry this theme in it's composition. Created in 1947 by Paul Vacher based on a formula by Jean Carles, this perfume is young and sophisticated, and perhaps a bit too conscious of its beauty. Fresh, haughty topnotes of gardenia, galbanum, bergamot, and clary sage give way to the 'beauty's rose' in the heart, blended with the 'gaudy Spring' of jasmine, narcissus and neroli. The base is comprised of deeper, cautious notes of patchouli, oakmoss, labdanum, and sandalwood.
I see in this perfume a beautiful young girl, dressed to the nines in Dior's post-war 'New Look', cool in the assurance that she'll be young forever, 'feeding her light's flame with self-substantial fuel'.
All that's missing is the red carpet and the paparazzi....












