I still haven't smelled either of the Dioramas. I'm going to make a point of it, though, so many people like them both.

I still can't help but think that if Dior really wanted to, they could take vintage Diorling, run in through a machine to analyze its formula, and even without being able to procure the same bases that they could have forty years ago, come up with a fragrance that is closer to the original than the current Diorling. Of course, maybe they didn't want to, and not from being cheap, either. Maybe Dior decided that the new Diorling would be more marketable. It's certainly not as extreme as the old Diorling.

1) I think my often skin brings out leather (in a good way) in perfume. But maybe not–cause I couldn't even smell the leather in the Hermes, and the new Diorling, it is clearly there. I FAR prefer this to the H.

2) I really DRENCHED myself in it (if I didn't, no one could smell anything at all).

Since all my fellow “sniffers” agreed with me, I guess it was not just a matter of taste. Chemistry is everything!

It's also a side-effect of a decades-old practice in perfumery: the company that employs the perfumer and manufactures the oils for, say, a couture house, is the only one to have the actual formula: Dior never saw the formula for Miss Dior, Diorissimo, etc.

Why was that? Because there was no contract between the couture house and the perfume company, so the only way the perfume company could ensure their profits is by hanging on for dear life to the formulas.

Say Edmond Roudnitska made Diorama and Diorissimo: it was actually fabricated in his factory near Grasse, but as he had rather small facilities, he subcontracted this and that bit of the formula to other Grasse labs. Now if one of those labs shuts down, the particular base that they made is lost forever. So even if Roudnitska's estate has the formula, they can't make Diorissimo or Diorama exactly like the man composed it.

In some cases, like Diorling maybe, they may not even have access to the formula at all, so they knock together a simile based on what they can do with analysis of the original. The companies that actually made it, or bits of it, may be long-gone.

This is even more striking when brands change hands — maybe this is the case of Je Reviens, which went steadily downmarket from being a scent from the first couture house in history. The current owners are manufacturing a reproduction from an imitation from an approximation, using cheaper and cheaper ingredients at every reformulation.

So add cheapness + regulations + the tradition of secrecy in perfumery, and there you go.

All this info comes from an impeccable source, by the way: Mr Jean Kerléo, founder of the Osmothèque, whom I met last month.