Caron Nuit de Noël : Carolling with Auntie Mame

For the past fifteen years (or thereabouts), every year on Christmas Eve I dab on a touch of Caron Nuit de Noël.

The ritual, which has apparently consumed less than a third of the lovely Art Deco bottle (it’s hard to tell because it’s black), came about during the Caron binge that succeeded my 10-year exclusive love affair with Habanita…

As a follow-up to Habanita, Nuit de Noël was a pretty good choice for my pre-perfumista nose to zero in on: in Michael Edward’s Perfume Legends, the perfumer Guy Robert explains that the 1922 Caron served as an inspiration for the 1924 Molinard, as well as for the 1926 Chanel Bois des Iles and the 1937 Schiaparelli Shocking, scents I cherish. I can even detect a kernel of my later infatuation with leather chypres such as Bandit and Diorling in the legendary “mousse de Saxe” that underlies most of the Carons. This de Laire base was composed by Mme de Laire to dress up a rather rough-smelling molecule, isobutyl-quinolin, first synthesized in the 1880s: she rounded off its licorice, leather and iodine facets with geranium and vanilla.

Again according to Guy Robert, this time in his out-of-print Les Sens du Parfum, the Russian Ernest Daltroff, a self-taught perfumer like his contemporary François Coty, relished “powerful” and even “brutal” materials, including new synthetics other perfumers were reluctant to use. As a result, his scents had an overwhelming and very modern – at the time – quality well-suited to the new type of the sheath-wearing garçonne, excess in make-up, embroidery and fragrance had replaced the intricacies of 19^th century feminine fashion.

“You are at the theater, Robert writes, your right-hand neighbour smells of Opium, the left-hand one of Mitsouko, in front of you a woman is wearing Estée. Another woman arrives wearing Nuit de Noël and suddenly you can’t smell the other perfumes!”

Nuit de Noël hides its powerful punch under an overdose of rose de Mai (rosa centifolia) absolute; combined with orris, the first waft is intensely powdery with a slightly green aspect (violet leaf, muguet and vetiver) which lends it a touch of bitterness, and an undercurrent of the wine-like note certain roses give off. The other florals (jasmine, ylang-ylang and tuberose) are much less prominent to my nose.

Somehow, perhaps because of the dark, burnt licorice-like IBQ married with the sweetness of vanilla and ylang-ylang – which shares molecules with cocoa butter – Nuit de Noël manages to give off the scent of candied sweets: Luca Turin is spot-on when he speaks of “marron glacé” (candied chestnuts) in The Guide. Other commentators mention black-chocolate-coated orange rinds…

But does Nuit de Noël smell like Christmas? Most definitely not, if Christmas smells of fir, oranges spiked with cloves and gingerbread… Rather, its powdery-dark blend evokes a bitterly cold night from which one emerges, wrapped in furs, shoulders and breasts dusted with Poudre Caron under a 1920s beaded sheath for a champagne réveillon at the Crillon. No wonder Patrick Dennis chose it as a scent for his iconic Auntie Mame, “a froth of whipped cream and champagne and daydreams and Nuit de Noël perfume.” (quote found in a post by Blogdorf Goodman)

The crazed, witty, flamboyant Mame, “lavish practitioner of multiple personae” (Camille Paglia) – and a woman who would definitely eclipse any other when making her entrance in a theater – is who I channel when wearing Nuit de Noël to somewhat homier family celebrations. So feminine that she veers into androgyny through excess theatricality, just as Nuit de Noël hides its deceptive toughness under its powdery rosy retro cloud. If you bump into her under the mistletoe, run for cover or prepare for surrender: this is not a scent for wusses.

P.S. The fragrance I’ve reviewed was purchased in the early 90s; I haven’t tested the current version. Blogs and forums have been buzzing with comments on recent, disastrous reformulations of Caron classics, especially since the house got thrashed in Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez’s Perfumes: The Guide. If you have had the opportunity to compare, please feel free to comment.

Image: Rosalind Russell in Morton DaCosta's 1958 Auntie Mame.