Reviews of Nuit de Noël 
Caron (1922)

A gorgeous, sophisticated and clever woman... furs, pearls and doesn't suffer fools... unafraid to be who she is, she may freeze out those with less confidence, who are intimidated by her assurance.

Nuit de Noël is a difficult complicated perfume, probably only a total love for long perfume addicts and true vintage admirers. A masterpiece from another era, from another aesthetics. Strong fragrance - got the vintage parfum and it's so beautifully floral and woody like it dances from one to the other while blending in your skin. It is classic and fresh and herbal all at the same time. Nuit de Noël swirls, with the green edge lifting the heady oriental feel. The rose and ylang ylang lasts for quite a long while and finally settles down softly like musk and sandalwood.

In fact, You need to love rose, oakmoss, dense old school powdery flowers, deep animalic notes and sansalwood to love this one. I sense cumin and carnation notes there too, though they aren't listed. It starts out really strong and spicy and slowly gets powdery and creamy, merging into your own body scent with perfection. Here is a perfume that quite literally will give you wings. Where you go on your flight is for you to decide. Timelessy sexy.

NdN is not, as you can see, easily understood, even by perfume collectors.
For a long while, I thought maybe Luca Turin was right, that it was a boring scent. Like him, I enjoyed and wore Nuit's chic daytime fore runner, Violette Precieuse, which swaps roses for violets and iris over that same mousse de saxe base. Despite the similarities, I still did not get Nuit de Noel. But I was wearing the edt in those days, that's like reading Anna Karenina abridged.

Nuit de Noel is hard to fathom, not because of what's in it, but because of what's not. Animalic? There's no civet, no castoreum, not even any musk. There is a lot of mousse de Saxe according to Michael Edwards, and that's in both heart and base, and the perfume is 25% sandalwood. There is also not a citrus fruit in sight, there's no fruit at all. So Is this chypre? That depends on how you define the genre. Or does it waver between chypre and woody oriental?

Either way, this is a great story telling perfume. The story is about Christmas Eve. Part one is the midnight mass, the middle is a sophisticated bouquet containing lily of the valley, violet leaves and tuberose, the end, the glorious dry down, is all about going home in a snow storm with the scent of roses, incense and snow surrounding you. Romantic as Pasternak, this is old lady, old fashioned, old world: eternity in a jostled snow globe.

There is a mysterious sillage to Nuit de Noel that haunts but is yet just out of reach. This restraint from indulgence is what makes it such a pleasure. It opens with a mossy rose and ylang ylang with an undercurrent of subdued and sweet jasmine. No sooner than this floral pageantry opens does it flesh out into a more languorous panorama of antique amber and sandalwood.

The florals go from lead to chorus in the development, and here the civet and musk fade in, as if via an olfactory dimmer, and it all seems to coalesce into this discrete whole where all notes share a vibration, as stellar as the North star. Suggestions of incense come to mind further on: frankincense, myrrh, and even gold.

"There'll be scary ghost stories
And tales of the glories of the
Christmases long, long ago."

My flacon of NUIT DE NOËL in the EDT came in today. It is a full tester flacon dating to the 1970's, so I'm guessing the oakmoss and musks are authentic. Interestingly, the atomiseur is not hand-pump-operated, but rather is powered with an internal aerosol, in the modern fashion.

Initial spray on my skin yields brilliant, nose-prickling aldehydes of the vintage Chanel No. 5 variety, strongly laced with a nutmeg almost recalling eggnog, perhaps.

Then a brilliant sheen of swirling, indistinct floralcy remains for some time, reminding me of the carnation in L'AIR DU TEMPS along with abstract concepts of rose and muted ylang.

It all dries down to a bittersweet aromatic/oriental quality closely related to that of Molinard HABANITA: a faint, discreet sweetness alluding to vanilla and benzoin, but made bitter with a sombre myrrh and a brackish geranium, laced with a nuance of toasted nuts and dried orange-peel and a faintly ghosted cinnamon. Some might even read the bitterness as being nicotinic, like freshly dried tobacco leaves. In farthest drydown, one sees the whole mixture is balanced on a tender deermusk/oakmoss/benzoin base, which recalls anew the nutmeg of the takeoff.

NdN is a lovely scent, maybe not dazzlingly complex, exactly, but straightforward and shapeshifting in the pre-1960's style. As others have mentioned, it does not smell like any Christmas I can think of, but instead is trying to capture, probably, the sombreness of a midnight mass in a Catholic church. It also seems to defy olfactive family categorization, like VOL DE NUIT and HABANITA do: an ambered, sweetish base pointing to Oriental, but with upper notes that seem to indicate an aldehydic floral chypre.

If you are studying perfume history, you'd do well to obtain some NUIT DE NOËL.

Caron Nuit de Noël (1922) is a dark, brooding floral chypre on a Mousse de Sax base, and according to Caron, "saw the light of day in 1922, just after the First World War, while Europe was in a frenzy of parties and exotic escapism". I can totally see something this indolic and bacchanal being the scent of the evening after "The Great War" held everyone's life in the balance, plus with the unrestricted Capitalism of the era making new-age barons and duchesses of the wealthy elite, hedonism was at an all-time high just prior to The Great Depression. Ernest Daltroff delivered his cheeky vision of "Christmas Night" in perfume form, but there is nothing really sacred about what's going on in the bottle. The beautiful 1920's art deco lettering around the original black extrait bottle (again being used for current production) sets the mood for what's inside. Nuit de Noël didn't really have a direct Guerlain or Coty contemporary at the time, but the long-dead Guerlain Djedi (1927) is said to also be a similarly-dark chypre.

Nuit de Noël opens with a note accredited as based on a tincture Daltroff made of rose and jasmine, with lemon and ylang-ylang to soften the approach of such a heady start. From there, we get some iris to sharpen and clean up the accord, with muguet, tuberose, and violet leaf to further round and complicate the floral balance as it dances on a rich mossy base. By the heart, Nuit de Noël is a tad stifling with all the indolic florals fighting with the soapy ones, but late in the dry down, the oakmoss in the Mousse de Saxe (truly something that can be worn by itself) helps add the dark bite which hits on the "nuit" aspects of the florals. Vanilla and amber also warm things up but the smoky vetiver assists the oakmoss in the Mousse to give the final sharp punch at the skin level. This isn't the terrifying leather chypres of the post-WWII years, but Nuit de Noël does not take prisoners in the bedroom, which is surprising since it has no evident animalics. Wear time is fair as is sillage, since despite the nearly-cloying waft the accord can produce on the wearer, performance is otherwise a tight bubble.

Those who splurge for the pricey extrait as the only currently-available option may get less of that Mousse de Saxe effect due to IFRA, but the rest of this old girl's fangs are still intact. The vintage eau de toilette sample I primarily based my review on comes in the same bottle the masculine Caron range still uses, and has comes across like the younger and dangerously-flirtateous sibling to Narcisse Noir (1911). This is another perfume for history buffs with no proper context or gender for use in modern times, but its original feminine marketing still mostly applies due to the semi-oriental ambery floral feeling which contrasts the striking chypre structure. Like most older Carons, vintage EdC and EdT bottles going for fair prices are rare, so there are seldom any deals regardless if buying new or old. I don't quite think "gothic" applies here, but for anyone wanting to smell like ghosts of the past dancing to Cole Porter in dimly-lit gilded halls, this is your perfume if the steep price is right. Sample if possible, and preferably vintage at that. Thumbs up!

Vintage sample... First time I've ever sniffed. It IS a beautiful chypre as I imagined it would be. This is yet another classic that had slipped by my radar for so many years.

It is the classic, multi-layered floral grouping of notes that mesh well together. She doesn't give up her individual notes that easily. The top and middle notes swirl together in a whirling waltz. Mature. Deep. No sugary modernity. Style and grace are its character. It is enveloping. It hugs you.

The base notes compliment the other layers. Again, I find I cannot pick out any specific note. Caron's secret sauce mix. I can't say that Nuit de Noel smells of Christmas to me. I can say it does represent Winter, for its wear-ability. The hints of spice, vanilla-sugar, and woody-earth aspects of the base are comforting. Pure classic. Pure femininity. One of the best bottle and packaging designs ever, to boot.

It's a like a worm soft blanket yet so powerful and unique. It smells totally manly (what ever that means) on my skin. Can't get enough of this fragrance!

Soft and silky and utterly sumptuous, this velvety chypre/oriental smells like sweetened nuts and velvety-moss and candle-lit incense. In other words, it smells deeply, gently vintage and completely unlike anything else. The pure parfum in the black 'flapper' bottles is the version to sniff. Here all the floral notes (primarily ylang-ylang and rose) blend so beautifully with the low-toned alto-notes of oak moss and anise that it's as if your skin itself is simply radiating a lovely and tender essence--one that marks you as warm, beautiful, grown up, and female. There is something in here that also hints at seductive, swirling smoke. This is a rare beauty, and along with Tabac Blond, one of Caron's absolute best.

Pure unadulterated love for this one!

A warm embrace, that gathers and holds and keeps you close. Nuit de Noël offers a reassurance that classical perfumery, with its layering and orchestration, has still so much to tell us and that its message can be of warmth and love. But the first thing it seems to be saying in its enclosing hug is: ‘Be not afraid.' For here is a perfume of great boldness, albeit dressed in golden raiment and with a softness of touch that defies you to equate daring with any kind of militancy.
Upfront is a huge floral bouquet, with a rich and heady jasmine as its star; it has an amazing carnal warmth tempered by the classic understudy note of rose. The rose is here purely to round out and refine the opulent jasmine, rather than shine in its own right, and it performs this selfless function perfectly in the service of a luminous (yet far from transparent) floral accord.
In keeping with the classic manner the florals are wrapped in layer upon refined layer. Ambery-musky tones, a gauzy powder, a tremendously complex woody layer that feels like a perfume in its own right, accents of moss here rendered warm by the glow of the rest, all suggest great depths and familiar mysteries. I smell matured and tempered spices, balsams, candied orange and patisserie almond and chestnut preparations. It matters little if there are corresponding ingredients to these impressions – this is a perfume that suggests so many things, none in discord. This is its gift, accept it and be rewarded.
Despite a noticeable moss note, I would hesitate to call Nuit de Noël a chypre – it has none of that family's briskness or angularity. Instead, there is oriental warmth and luxury, contained within a classic sense of structure – there is no sprawl to it. That classicism gives it an antique quality but one that is sympathetic, full of character and so much more giving than the distortions of nostalgia.

Modern niche perfumery makes it easy for us. It must be like playing charades with the world's slowest child. They supply us with all the visual and background cues and then sit back and do a slow clap when we get it. Ambre Russe? Mention vodka in the press materials and in one sniff we are mentally whisked away to boozy Cossacks, samovars, fur, and gold-gilded palaces. De Profundis? Give an essentially cheery floral perfume a gloomy name and a depressive back-story, and suddenly everyone makes the connection to death and funerals.

If we weren't supplied so readily with these cues, would we make those connections? Probably not. But let's admit that the back-story is half the fun of it. We are only human after all – we want everything we do to have meaning. Even if it's only our perfume.

Smell Caron Nuit de Noel in vintage parfum form, though, and everything you know about narrative is upended. It is a Wagnerian opera-sized perfume and we not handed so much as a leaflet. Oh yes, I forgot, they did give us that name – Nuit de Noel. But it doesn't smell like Christmas, so that doesn't help.

But this is what perfume smelled like once upon a time. A dense, powdered thing of mystery that doesn't really give a shit if you manage to unlock its layers or not. It's so analog in a digital world that it makes me laugh.

Nuit de Noel doesn't really have traditional topnotes. In fact, it's a fragrance best worn for its basenotes, and is therefore the complete opposite to how perfumes are made these days - stuffed with amazing topnotes that last just long enough to get you over to the till to pay your money and petering out into one big fat nothing three hours later. Nuit de Noel, on the other hand, plunges you right into the second cycle of Der Ring des Nibelungen and just trusts that you know enough German to get by. In a way, I appreciate that approach – by giving me very few cues, it expects me to have enough intelligence to figure it out on my own.

I'm still not sure I've figured Nuit de Noel out, though. I ain't that smart. But I like the challenge. The top notes are intense, like a wall of sound coming straight at you. Dense and unwieldy, it smells like bitter powder and polished old woods with a streak of green moss running through it. There is also a huge dose of the typically Caron carnation/clove accord, which I find bitter-leathery and spicy in equal measure. The overall impression I get is of being wrapped in an old fur coat – it's both old-fashioned and luxurious.

I don't get any of the Christmas associations, but there is a stage of its development where I sense both the mealy, fluffy meat of roasted chestnuts and a sweet, liquor-like rose. Perhaps it's that hint of rich fruited breads and baked goods that lead some to make the connection to Christmas. The green, mossy chypre notes also create a crisp, cold-air feeling, placing this perfume in the context of snow. Aside from the notes, there is a certain glow to this perfume - a radiant warmth like candlelight.

As time goes on, a licorice-like note creeps in, cloaking the fragrance in a velvety, sweet darkness. Think soft black licorice, not the challenging Danish stuff that tastes like salt. This note is a feature of the famous Mousse de Saxe, said to contain a heavy mixture of anise (or fennel seed), vanillin, geranium, and isobutyl quinoline (smoky, tough leather notes).

The Mousse de Saxe makes up a huge proportion of Nuit de Noel, and lends it its decisively dark green, mossy, smoky, and sweet flavor profile. A pre-packaged base, Mousse de Saxe is no longer made by Caron to the original recipe, although to their credit, they try to recreate it in order to keep their current parfums rich and full-bodied. But to my nose, there is a rich, dark, and melting softness to vintage Nuit de Noel (reminiscent of marrons glaces, as some have pointed out) that is just not there in the modern Carons.

The leather, powder, and geranium facets of the base connect Nuit de Noel to other hard-to-categorize fragrances like Habanita and Vol de Nuit. Part chypre, part oriental, all three of these fragrances are soft, boneless straddlers of several categories at once and contain a mystery of their very own that is difficult to unpack, to analyze. Mysterious and cool-toned, they leave behind a lingering impression of green moss, face powder, leather, and half-smoked cigarettes. The most slatternly women you could imagine, and the ones I most want to know.

Smelling Nuit de Noel parfum now a melancholic experience, though. Vol de Nuit and Habanita are still in good shape. But with oakmoss being severely restricted these days, the Caron bases can never smell as complex as they once did, and so when I smell my sample of vintage Nuit de Noel parfum, I realize that I'm essentially smelling the air from a time capsule.

A frame in time...

It's a freezing and dreary day. Not just every day however. It's Christmas Eve. And a proper one I might say, since there's a lot of snow around. And what's more, I got all lucky in my "thematic" shopping this morning. I stumbled upon a near mint antique bottle of Nuit de Noël in a flea market, complete with its jade shagreen case, tassel and stuff, and since I've always thought of it as one of the most elegant packagings ever made, I grabbed it without further ado. I guess that wishing it was full too, would be sort of pushing my luck.
With a solid piece of history in my coat's pocket, I think that having a couple of drinks while sniffing it wouldn't be such a bad idea on this cold winter day.
So, pretending that it's 1922, I enter an old bistrot in the city's most popular square, and order a glass of fine cognac.
From where I am, I can see a girl sitting on the stairs of a building's entrance, lying opposite to the bistrot's side windows.
A cascade of fiery red hair is bursting from her beanie.
She's like a torch burning in the snow...
She has placed her bag on the cold and wet marble and she's sitting on it. She holds a small paper bag in her hands and looks excited. I wonder what the cause of her exhilaration could be. I take a sip of my cognac and smile.
What she takes out of her small paper bag makes my heart miss a beat. I recognise the plain black-capped rectangular bottle. Or, to put it better, I recognise its label. She opens it and dabs a few drops on her wrists and on the sides of her neck. Now if this is not a coincidence, then it has to be fate signing at me.
Encouraged by the spirit of the day, I decide to be a little more daring than usual and find out which of the two.
...
"I'll show you mine if you show me yours."
Her amber eyes widen with surprise.
"What?..."
"Your Christmas Eve."
"What about it?"
I sway my bottle in front of her eyes.
"Hey! This has the same name, but it's so more beautiful and looks so old. What is it?"
"The grandmother of yours. Care to meet her?"
She accepts my offer for a drink. After all it's freezing outside.
...
"Oh my God... This is magical..."
Although the perfume is long gone, its soul is still lingering. And sometimes an echo can be louder than the sound itself.
She remains silent with her eyes closed for quite a while. Although I suspect where she might have been drifting, I ask her anyway.
"I was trying to imagine some of the hands that once held this bottle and some of the words that were whispered because of its content being worn. Anyway, my bus leaves in four hours. Can you stand me being ecstatic for this long, oh my noble stranger?"
"Noble stranger" is how we agreed calling each other, to maintain some of the mystery that is weaved with this special and magic day.
But in any case, I tell her that I could possibly stand her more likely for four years, if she could be that dramatic the whole time.
She smiles.
"OK, my turn now."
Although she has it dabbed also on her wrists, she lifts her hair, tilts her head, and invites me to sniff her neck. This upretentious and impulsive gesture warms my heart. But I guess this is what this girl is all about, warming people's hearts.
I go for the sniff, and...
I don't know if it's her gesture, the perfume itself, the surrounding festive atmosphere or any combination of them, but what I smell almost brings tears in my eyes.
I struggle not to kiss her neck, but it's my apparently cold nose tip that spares me the struggle, cause it touches her skin slightly and startles her a bit.
She steps back and sees my nearly teary eyes.
"Hey you dummy... Stop spoiling me! Do I smell that good?"
"You smell like the angels working in Heaven's pastry shop, while a forest wood fire is roaring in its fireplace..."
...
She won't stop giggling and laughing heartily for the whole three hours we'll spent together. She won't stop sniffing her wrists either. She looks so happy and carefree.
It's time for her to leave and catch her bus.
We walk outside and we stand for a while, staring at each other.
I don't know what to say.
She doesn't seem to know either.
She hesitates for a moment.
Then she leans towards me and with her frail hand tracing my cheek, her lips brush mine for an instant.
And by this fragile token of affection, I know that her scent will remain on me forever.
She turns her back and starts to walk away.
After a few steps she stops and turns her head back.
"I'm Maria!" she shouts, before vanishing in the crowd. I stand still among hundreds of people who are walking around me hastily. I light a cigarette and lean my back against a wall.
I close my eyes and try to imagine what she might be thinking when she went outside for a couple of minutes to buy a pack of cigarettes.
I close my eyes and try to imagine her surprise when she'll discover the flacon in her bag...
...
I hope you're happy beautiful Maria, wherever you are.
I never saw you grow old. I never saw you become distant. And you never saw me either.
Your icon remains immaculate in my mind, just like this little wonder that made our paths cross, that cold winter morning, 28 years ago.
Your laughter is still ringing in my ears.
And like a friendly and beloved ghost, you shall visit me once more this year, on the same day that I will allow myself a dab of the perfume that is you.
Forever young... Forever happy...
Forever my Maria from the Christmas of 1986.
My beautiful Maria of Nuit de Noël...

A vintage sample:
The top notes are delicious: jasmine and a balanced rose, with an overaching ylang ylang impression forming a great triad. A sweetness is present throughout the development of this scent, but is is never overly sweet, is never dominating and is never cloying.

In the drydown it leaves the floral side and a lovely and smooth sandal tone emerges, and later a wonderfully smoothly warm glowing amber takes the centre stage. It is here that the name makes sense; it is s bit like a winter day when passing the open door of a bakery, with warm air and the aroma of brioches in the air, with whiffs of spices added - a mild and gentle mossy note with olfactoric glimpses of cinnamon is present too.

The performance is outstanding, with moderate sillage, good projection and a sensational longevity of thirteen hours on my skin. This product is exceeding well blended of ingredients of the highest quality, and bears the hallmarks of a grand classic, a warm and comforting winter-cum-Noel scent without the usual festivity clichés. 4.5

Genre: Woody Oriental

The contemporary Nuit de Noël is a sweet woody oriental scent with a floral heart and a hint of gourmand edibility. As sometimes happens with relatively rich, dense scents, Nuit de Noël effectively does without distinct top notes, and delves right into an accord of vanilla, spices, orange blossom, soft, creamy woods, and a bit of iris. Time brings out a rose note with a touch of the peculiar yeasty quality I smell in certain live Gallica and Damask roses. The resulting olfactory arrangement suggests flowers and baked goods, which I suppose is consistent with the holiday theme.

I sense a distant kinship with Vol de Nuit here, but Nuit de Noël in its present form is a sweeter and simpler scent, with less prominent iris and without the edge contributed by the Guerlain's galbanum and herbal green notes. In stark contrast to so many contemporary scents, Nuit de Noël actually gains power, depth, and nuance in its drydown. It's at its best three or four hours after it's applied, when a beguiling animalic musk warms the unctuous vanilla, amber, and sandalwood base notes. Happily, the drydown lasts for hours, with persistent sillage and a firm but unobtrusive presence.

There's been much talk of decline in Caron's feminine scents since Luca Turin and Tanya Sanchez savaged most of the collection, but Nuit de Noël still smells to me like a quality fragrance. It's comfortable and versatile, with a development that belies its comparatively neutral opening. Try this if you've enjoyed classic woody orientals like Vol de Nuit, L'Heure Bleue, or Bois des Îles.

This is a review of the extrait.

I find it wonderful, a powdery chypre with a big shot of carnation and jasmine. The clove feels like an extension of the carnation, and the subtle woodiness (I would never have guessed it was supposed to be pine) feels like like a subtle woodiness that's part of the chypre structure.

Like many of the Caron extraits, Nuit De Noel has that specific temperamental quirk where the powder note is strong enough to knock out your nose almost instantly, so it's quite easy to put on too much and run around thinking you smell of lovely subtle flowers while unknowingly choking everyone around you with monumental sneezy powder sillage. I prefer to dab on a single drop. Then, the wonderful flowers and woody greens may be a bit more in the background, but the powdery old-school aldehydes give it a wonderful depth and I feel like I'm smelling the whole thing.

There was a television commercial for make-up that aired when I was young. It tried to sell the viewer on the notion that nobody would even know you were wearing make-up! Not too bright, I took this to mean that make-up did nothing whatsoever. I thought if nobody notices, why wear it? To this day, I've never understood make-up.

Nuit de Noel strikes me similarly. It smells identifiably ‘perfumey' yet on the level of perfume, it comes off as forcefully non-descript----intentionally under-recognizable. It is a soft chypre, soft like a seat-cushion filled with marshmallows. It doesn't evolve over time so much as it fades into the skin. Once on the skin, though, it doesn't disappear. It gives the impression of of something ostensibly hidden but easily found. It's the person playing hide and seek who heads for the nearest tree, then hides behind it, peaking out often to see what's happening.

Low wattage, low sillage, if you close your eyes, it might smell like either a tiny spritz of perfume or a whole lot of make-up. Great for a man if you're willing to accept the implication.

Not all Caron fragrances are masterpieces but they all share one very important characteristic: They are totally unpretentious. Nuit de Noël may not be the most spectacular EDT available but it is quite pleasant. And since it is not very popular nowadays, those who can wear it well can really make a statement. NdN cannot be compared to anything else on the market now except maybe some early 20's fragrances such as Chanel No5 (although very remotely). I just don't get the name though. My mother wore NdN a few times on Christmas Eve (as a conversation piece, essentially) but I cannot say that I find it particularly christmassy. To me, a fragrance with a Christmas theme should include notes such as nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, orange peels, spruce, hot buttered rum or gingerbread. NdN has no such notes in it's olfactive pyramid:

Top notes : ylang-ylang, tincture of rose and jasmine
Middle notes: sandalwood and oak moss
Base notes: musk and amber

Nuit de Noël is a simple yet quite pleasant fragrance and I think it deserves a little more credit. I am glad most of us here gave it a good review!

Chypre is my favorite type of fragrance, and I consider myself fortunate because, no matter the variances of note construction the first, middle, and last thing I smell of a good chypre is… “chypre.” I don't much of an opening, I get a bit of jasmine, some aldehydes, some woods, a significant animalic vibration, and some moss: What I get is 100% chypre: This one is the of the brightest, chypres I've tested. I think the brightness is caused by aldehydes of the opening and the ylang of the heartnotes. The result is a soft, delicate warm with a gentle sillage, bright florals, distant woods, and most definitely chypre.

Nuit de Noel doesn't smell like Christmas to me. OK, its brightness and softness fit, but the individual notes aren't of a generic Christmas venue. It smells to me like chypre, and it's an excellent one.

How heart warming it is to consider that in 1922 Ernest Daltroff called his latest creation "the Night of Christmas," or, as it is said in English, Christmas Eve. The hush that spreads over Paris on December 24th is something one should make a point of witnessing at least once. A certain inference we can make, those of us who have again and again walked through it, sometimes under the snow, is that, in 1922, France was so very much more French. Today and for as long as I can remember, the people of France have shown a very specific "Christmas Spirit," unlike that of other Catholic countries. Apparent is neither Italian exuberance nor any other kind of wild fervor, but more a kind of reverential distance, steeped in formal Orthodox Faith. In France, on the Night of Christmas, there is a sense of holiness that is palpable, and...touching. Caron's "Nuit de Noel" is appropriately dainty in its flight: Strangely evocative of the Angelic, it is the scent of frozen evening air gently wafting through full bodied red roses, somewhat overblown. This chill fades over the course of the flight, giving way to a kind of olfactive Divine Liturgy of incenses, with a resinous benzoin in the staring role. Ernest Daltroff must have suffered from a touch of nevrosis, for there is a kind of chaos remarkable in all of his creations, and not just a small dose of melancolia. Nuit de Noel is united to all the other Carons by it's shady cacaphony of notes, so many that the whole is somewhat perplexing, resulting in fragrances so intricate, they defy analytical description. Where Guerlain was always organic, Caron was kaleidoscopic. The name Guerlain also carried with it, and still does to this day, a vague tinge of bas bleu "compagnard" that Caron could never suggest, thus the myth of "Grandes Dames wore Caron and Coquettes wore Guerlain." Realistically, and from an intrinsically French point of view, this comparison should be interpreted more as "Paris High Society vs. life in the Provinces," or perhaps a kind of self-imposed exile from the norm.
It is safe to say that in 1922, very many considered Caron to be a more informed and refined choice of perfumerie than Guerlain, as difficult as that is to imagine today. When Couturier Patou entered the fragrance arena in the mid twenties, with blends available strictly to the clients of his Haute Couture salons, it is also likely that more Caron devotees jumped ship than did fans of Guerlain. Caron compositions are more like those of Patou, their density and overwrought structure having little in common with "Guerlinades." None of the Caron fragrances have aged particularly well, Nuit de Noel being no exception: There's a depth to it, a kind of neo-gothic romance that's all powder, silk, swan's down and rouge: A very Grande Dame indeed, perched at her dressing table surrounded by dozens and dozens of red roses, burning pastilles and furiously applying make-up, en route, perhaps, to a funeral on Christmas Eve, or so it appears to us today. Then, this emotional and highly dramatic depth was considered the very height of chic, much in the way wan fragrances that smell of watermelon are today. Admittedly, there is something slightly disquieting about discovering a charmeuse-clad Lady powdering her decolletage, arms, hands, face and neck on the alter of a Catholic cathedral in the midst of the solemn and Holy things that manifest on the night of Christmas: Thus is the confusion of Caron, an abstraction born of nevrosity, the hallmark of Ernest Daltroff. No Caron worthy of its name would ever just give itself over, for these are fragrances that could aptly carry the coveted banner of "bewitching." Acting very like the other Caron Greats, Nuit de Noel is a kind of stain: It never goes away-and must "wear off," a process that can last for days, over multiple baths, and noticeably vary each time it is applied: The same bottle of Nuit de Noel may wear differently from one day to the next, inexplicably, surprising the wearer as no other perfume I have ever experienced: Something about it is obviously overly reactive to body chemistry, itself an unpredictable mystery perhaps more easily explained and understood from a purely medical perspective.
Only the flight, a two hour affair, which itself has an identity all its own, could be considered remotely "wearable" by today's standards. For the rest of its 20 plus hours, Nuit de Noel will most definitely not go unnoticed. This is a Great Perfume with complexities that are guaranteed to be misinterpreted and very sadly not remotely understandable to most modern noses: Rather than evoking the sublime and holy hush of a snowy Paris night at Christmas, it may awaken memories of a funeral parlor engaged in a very religious open-casket wake, or, alternately, a silent movie-era vampire drama, both veiled in heaps and heaps of make up, and a dim, candle-lit gloom. A very solemn hymn is Nuit de Noel--and the enigma of a wildly attractive and ultra-chic sensation of a scent, no doubt considered daring and sexy in its time, that somehow ended up being conceivably the perfect choice for a dignified and pious woman in morning desirous of solitude. One of the last commercial perfumes to have retained its bottle and packaging unaltered to this day, and a beautiful bouquet of quiet, introverted thoughts, Nuit de Noel is a treasure for being the very precise illustration of a reverent culture that is out of the question today. Hopefully, we will find it in our hearts to be thankful for it, and, in the True Spirit of Christmas, be wonderstruck, if only for a mere fleeting instant. From deep within the blackness, and through the chill of a cold winters night, a distant and alien star mysteriously shines: Do you see what I see?

A softer less urbane version of Chanel no 5 this fragrance has a certian country elegance to it picturing oaktrees lined side by side riding in a open horse drawn carrige to an elegantsouthern plantation full of white magnolias or going to a ketucky Derby wearing your finest.The opening has a aldehydic note next is the scent of bergamot and at it's base is rose gives it a powdery textureunlike chanel no 5 caron's nuit de noelavoids the clinical amount of Aldehydesand sharp citruses and adds a warm amber note that is inviting.this is perfect also winter and christmas eve parties.

I came across a beautiful vintage black art deco bottle of this perfume today and I was wowed. It is so rich and warm. Spiced rum and sweet amber mingling with a touch of musk, cocoa and tobacco is what comes to mind. I think the vintage cologne would be a wonderful fragrance for a classic gentleman as well (especially those favoring Taylors). Evening fragrance for certain. Absolutely enchanting.