LVMH
Dior batch codes, explained
Dior is the most-searched batch code in perfumery, largely because Sauvage is the most counterfeited fragrance in the world. It is also the one where the public decoders disagree most sharply: three incompatible readings of the same four characters are in circulation, and they produce dates months or years apart. We would rather show you that disagreement than pick a side and present it as fact.
We do not return a date for Dior. Enter a code and we will tell you exactly why, and what to check instead.
Where Dior prints the code
Ink-jetted on the underside of the bottle and printed on the bottom of the box. On the Sauvage and Homme bottles it sits on the flat glass base under the shoulder.
What the characters mean
Four alphanumeric characters on most modern bottles. What the individual positions mean is not published, and the public decoders disagree with each other about it.
Why we stop there: Three mutually incompatible decoding schemes are published for LVMH fragrances. One reads the second character as a month letter running A to L; another as A to M with I skipped, which shifts every month from September onward; a third reads the code as a factory letter, a year letter and a day of the year, with no month at all — and contradicts its own year table in its own worked example. Nothing public adjudicates between them, so any date we returned would be a coin toss across a third of the calendar.
Dior batch code questions
Why do the online Dior decoders disagree with each other?
Because none of them is working from a published specification — each has reverse-engineered a table and they reached different answers. One reads the second character as a month letter running A to L. Another reads A to M with I skipped, which shifts every month from September onward. A third reads the code as a factory letter, a year letter and a day of the year, with no month at all — and then contradicts its own year table in its own worked example. They cannot all be right.
Can a batch code tell me whether my Sauvage is fake?
It can raise a flag but it cannot clear a bottle. Sauvage counterfeits are sophisticated and routinely carry well-formed codes. The check that still works without a decoder is comparing the code on the bottle against the code on the box: on a genuine bottle they are printed from the same run and agree. A mismatch is one of the few signals a buyer has that genuinely means something.
Do the codes on the Dior box and bottle need to match?
Yes — on a genuine bottle they are printed from the same run and will agree. A mismatch between box and bottle is one of the more reliable warning signs available to a buyer, because it usually means packaging and contents were brought together after the fact.
Same scheme, other houses
These brands sit under LVMH and stamp their bottles the same way, so if you can read one you can read them all.
Try it before you commit
Checking a batch code is usually a way of asking whether a bottle is worth the money. A Dior decant answers that on your own skin, poured from a bottle whose source we log — no marketplace gamble, no full-bottle regret.