En Avion
Caron (1929)

The 2012 extrait of En Avion, as recommended by Victoria of Bois de Jasmin, embodies that warm, subtle beauty that is the signature of Caron, and I feel it's safe to say that it preserves the integrity of Ernest Daltroff's original composition. It opens with a rounded, muted orange blossom that quickly transforms into a rose-tinted, spicy carnation and bittersweet opoponax. Moments are reminiscent of orange pomander, hints of parma violet, the old mahogany interiors of a Victorian home, a shoe box of old letters and memorabilia. Over time, a shift towards dry leather surfaces, time-worn and tender from age.

Its theme, inspired by the first female pilots, Amelia Earhart, Helen Boucher, had me ponder early aviation which immediately brought me to a book my father owned that I would obsessively study as a young one: The Concise History of Aviation. He gave it to me when I last visited him, and it's a treasure to me. There was even some scribble from my wee six-year-old hand on a sheet of paper that I found within its pages. The image you see in the background is from its pages.

This is where a perfume can transcend its own context and become a far more personal experience. As I wear this, I meditate on the passage of time; time waits for nothing and no one, people come and go, there's joy and loss and everything in between. To experience the smells of another era can be profound to me and it reminds me of a heartbreakingly beautiful song from Brian Eno, "How Many Worlds." I leave you with that: listen to it, and you'll know what I mean...

There’s no mistaking En Avion as anything other than a Caron. Everything comes from a well-established rulebook – flip to page ten for the stinging clove topnote of Poivre, the smoky, medicinal amber tilting its cap to leather, well, that’s Tabac Blond, and the piles of soft, mossy, licorice-and-rose-scented face power are lifted straight out of the drydown of Nuit de Noel.

But I have a sneaking fondness for En Avion above and beyond these other, possibly better regarded perfumes. It could be because that first big whoosh of scent mixes the ridiculous with the sublime – expensive jasmine mingling with the tack of sun-warmed pleather, an opulent amber against the spicy shaving soap of opoponax, or a stick of clove-scented stick of rock or bubblegum (vaguely Brighton Beach-ish) dropped into an exquisitely ornate pot of pink face powder, the kind that the sales assistants retrieve wordlessly from beneath the counter the minute they catch sight of your American Express Centurion.

Mostly, though, I love that it has this opaque texture halfway between smoke and cream, and no underlying structure to speak of. En Avion gives you all its glory upfront and then does a slow, graceful fade out that simply lowers the saturation level with each passing minute. Wearing it reminds me of being in one of those glider planes that drift so smoothly from one altitude to the next that you are unaware of your own descent until you suddenly see the ground. In the end, all that remains is a pouf of spicy powder from a big red tin of Imperial Leather talc, which makes me wonder if that’s all it ever was to begin with.

En Avion Vintage Parfum

First applied, it reminded me of Vintage Piguet's Visa. Caron's En Avion came first.

Rich, dense floral, neroli, carnation spicyness, a lilt of leather and honeyed lilac...and a nod of animalic touch to set off the florals. Feminine, sexy in the vein of such vintage classics such as My Sin extrait as well. The depth is as rich as the ocean and the world opulent for these times comes to mind.

Modern sensibilities may have trouble with it, but if you are a vintage Caron fan this is lovely.

This was the first Caron I bought: I sprayed several perfumes on my wrist, wandered around Harrods for a bit, and came back to choose this one. Given the negative reviews of Caron reformulations, I didn't expect this to have any leather notes in it, but merely be a floral oriental. How wrong I was! This starts with balsamic notes floating around soft leather, then graduates to soft florals at the top. (or perhaps the other way round; in any case, there's a whole lot of rich oriental leather going on). More than anything, this scent makes me think 'rich and intellectual': a woman travelling through Europe in the winter during the 1930s, perhaps on the Orient Express, and perhaps reading Tolstoy.

This review is for the current extrait, which is a very pretty, respectable floral fragrance. I like En Avion, but was surprised to find how much it resembles its sibling, Tabac Blond: they are almost identical to my nose, except that En Avion is topped off by a green note that smells like a snapped branch. I don't get much leather punctuating this nicely crafted, polite floral bouquet (the original En Avion packed a real punch in that respect, mingled with plenty of spice). My neutral rating is not due to a comparison with En Avion's former self, though, but to its closeasthis similarity to Tabac Blond and its brief longevity, only a couple of hours on my skin. For all its grace, I find En Avion a bit melancholy in its lack of zest - more like a grounded aviatrix spinning tales of the air, than flying with her in the cockpit.

One of the few Caron perfumes that I really don't like. I can identify very few ingredients in this perfume, but on my skin it's quite a heavy floral, with a subtle spice background. It reminds me of Jean Patou's Cocktail, but with a sandalwood note. Just not my type of perfume.