Vol de Nuit by Guerlain: A Tribute to Saint-Exupéry and Audacity

An Enigmatic and Faceted Perfume

Vol de Nuit is an enigmatic perfume. It is certainly Guerlain’s most faceted, most sophisticated perfume. Vol de Nuit has a green facet that precedes the floral, the spicy, the leathery, the oriental, the woody, the chypre, and the powdery facets.

Its highly assertive personality is not easily accessible. To understand it, one must possess a certain olfactory heritage. I like to say that to discover Vol de Nuit, you must sleep with it! Those who have the patience to wait for the base notes will be rewarded. On my skin, alas, the alchemy does not happen.

The Olfactory Architecture

• Top Notes: They are “raspy,” with galbanum allied with petitgrain. They can be surprising, but they reward women or men who have the audacity to tame its mystery.
• Heart Notes: A cocktail of mingled flowers, a true firework display: violet, carnation (quite spicy with the addition of pimento), jasmine, rose, gentian, daffodil.
• Base Notes: A distinguished sillage, very slightly oriental with vanilla, resinous notes, iris. One can also smell its chypre, woody accord with sandalwood, patchouli, etc. And also a few sensual, sexy, animalic, leathery notes.

For Whom? The Perfume of Risk

Vol de Nuit is the perfume for women who risk it all. It is no coincidence that it is and has been worn by powerful women and personalities from the entertainment world.

Personally, I prefer the extract which is richer because its concentration and composition are truly different. For me, it would be a shame to reserve it for the night. It must be worn from the morning, in alliance with the eau de toilette; this yields wonders.

The extract is not strong; it is quite the opposite. It is the most intimate product, it is for oneself and for one’s loved ones. It should be associated with the more extroverted eau de toilette, and the trail will be smelled by people lucky enough to be behind you. It ensures a sillage that will leave an indelible mark.

Originally, this perfume, created at the beginnings of the airmail service (Aéropostale), gives a nod to the rumor that women rivaled men and that the delicacy of their movements made them better pilots than men (Hélène Boucher, Amelia Mary Earhart, Miss Cochrane, and many others).

Vol de Nuit and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

In 1931, the French pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, author of the bestseller “The Little Prince,” published a book that enjoyed great success: Night Flight (Vol de Nuit). In this sometimes autobiographical book, one finds the account of the adventures of a journey he made: he left from Tierra del Fuego to New York, passing through Patagonia.

Rivière gave his men the order to fly by night, understanding that this was the only way to beat the speed record held by postal trains. One can easily imagine the highly risky nature of such an enterprise at that time. The hero also recalls how one of his pilots, Fabien, disappeared below Patagonia while trying to reach Buenos Aires.

Fabien soon discovers with his radio operator that he has deviated and that the fuel reserve will not allow him to return to land. His wife worries, decides to go to the airfield, contact is lost with his boss Rivière; everyone knows he is doomed. Despite this severe blow, Rivière continues to fight energetically to maintain night flights at all costs, triumphantly imposing the idea of the airmail service.

From start to finish, this novel expresses a philosophy based on courage, heroism, and a will to succeed. This novel makes it clear that every flight was an adventure fraught with danger and anguish. Courageous, the perfume Vol de Nuit is too. It is the perfume of risk, of dangerous games, full of audacity, the perfume of charismatic women.

The creation of this extraordinary perfume was the most beautiful tribute Jacques Guerlain could give to his very good friend. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, commander of the French air squadron, disappeared during a mission in July 1944.

For many years, on gala evenings in Salon de Provence, Guerlain distributed Vol de Nuit gift sets, bearing the emblem of the French Wings, to the cadets of the Air School. 1933, the year Vol de Nuit was created, was also the year Air France was founded.

The Bottle: An Art Deco Icon

The bottle, which I find quite masculine, was created by Raymond Guerlain in collaboration with Baccarat. Square in shape, the bottle is made of smoked glass, its eight angles are beveled. On both faces, the relief decoration represents the motif of an airplane propeller in motion.

The name in gilded metal, die-cut, forms the belt of the propeller on one surface. Between the two wars, the sky was considered a place of mystery arousing enthusiasm, evoking exoticism and distant destinations. The metallic stopper, square and gilded, is a symbol of modernism as it evokes a famous mechanical part, the triumph of machinism and the conquest of the air.

This bottle, like many others at Guerlain, is avant-garde since it is the first time metal was combined with glass: it is very much inscribed in its Art Deco era. Its box is lined with an imitation of zebra skin.

Discretion and Rarities

The original bottle only exists in the 60ml size. For smaller sizes, the fragrance nestles in the Jicky bottle. Vol de Nuit is sold essentially in France (confidential sale). A few pieces are also sold in Japan, under the name of Vol de Nuit translated into Japanese as “Yakaïsko” (phonetically and approximately).

Even if it sells very little, Guerlain insists on keeping it in the catalog, being well aware of its splendor!

A quick word on Vol de Nuit Evasion, a limited edition for airports. It contains, as you may have recognized, Attrape Coeur, also known under the old name of Guet Apens, in a less concentrated version. Attrape Coeur, in its original concentration, can be found at the Maison Guerlain in the “Les Parisiennes” collection.