Nanker Tang's Review of Nuit de Noël by Caron

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.

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