At first glance Natalie Portman’s new Miss Dior Blooming Bouquet campaign seems straightforward enough. The floral scent features notes of bergamot essence, Damascus rose, and peony with the tagline: “Love is a bouquet.”

The music to Natalie Portman’s new Miss Dior Blooming Bouquet campaign is Janis Joplin for heaven’s sake. I thought I was going to lose my mind.

When Natalie Portman looks straight at me in a Janis Joplin music commercial and says WAKE UP, she has my undivided attention.

AOC wrote in 2019 about Natalie Portman’s human connection and deep respect for Catherine Dior. The Miss Dior fragrance was named for Christian Dior’s sister who was a member of the French resistance during WWII. Catherine was sent to multiple concentration camps in Germany.

In the 2019 interview for Harpers Bazaar UK, the Hollywood star had sober words for progressive optimists:

“I think it’s a mistake to think of humanity as evolving,” the intellectually-accomplished Portman explains. You want to believe it, for sure, but it’s more like cycles of violence. Yet we’ve had an extraordinary lifetime of peace, too, so it’s allowed us to live in this belief that progress is being made.”