Vol de Nuit

In creating Vol de Nuit in 1933, Jacques Guerlain offered a vibrant and dark fragrance, animalic and outrageously feminine, for daring and passionate dreamers drawn to wild exotic escapades.

A Vol de Nuit paying tribute to the men and women who venture into distant lands

The 1930s, the Roaring Twenties, saw the emergence of a new kind of adventurer: aviators. Determined to connect the different points of the globe at lightning speed, the men and women of the aéropostale risked losing their lives with every new venture. Yet nothing stopped them, as exemplified by the daring aviator and novelist Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

A great friend of Jacques Guerlain, Saint-Exupéry released a magnificent novel, Vol de Nuit, recounting the fantastic aerial epics of Rivière, the courageous commander of a squadron of aviators with whom he tried to establish the famous night flights to beat the speed of mail trains. Jacques Guerlain, fascinated by the courage and bravery of his friend's characters, decided to pay tribute to these brave, anonymous heroes who did not hesitate for a second in the face of danger by creating the perfume Vol de Nuit in 1933.

Vol de Nuit, Guerlain's fascinating oriental, was thus accompanied in its various advertisements by mysterious maritime spaces or remote mountains, always with the same symbol of the night bird, drawn in the manner of an airplane, presiding over these arid lands. For “There wandered the mists, their mystery and their fragrance. Then Vol de Nuit was created” Guerlain.

When Vol de Nuit asserts itself, women hide themselves...

“Rare, enigmatic, daring” according to Guerlain, the spirited Vol de Nuit appeals to women in search of a dry, woody chypre, a deep and floral oriental. But also to all those seeking both an unsettling fragrance and something a little “boyish.” Just like this magnificent bottle made by Baccarat, which highlights the delicate design of the smoked-glass flacon. It is meant to represent an airplane propeller in motion, flanked by a metal cap like a mechanical part sitting atop steel wings. Highly avant-garde in its blend of metal and glass, Vol de Nuit brings Art Deco to perfumery with an unsettling masculinity.

Vol de Nuit is a living, complex fragrance that never ceases to surprise, both through its typically masculine galbanum notes and its floral and woody facets. The top notes, composed of bergamot, lemon and mandarin, are fresh and tangy, better allowing the floral cocktail piercing through the heart to unfold. Not to mention the addition of galbanum, paired with petitgrain, which better “seizes” us with its raspy, very green facets. Then comes the fireworks display of precious flowers: violet, carnation, jasmine, rose, gentian, jonquil and orange blossom. Pure, bucolic femininity that is completely transfigured by a dry, woody Guerlinade base, shifting between powerful animalic notes and the typically “Guerlain” notes of vanilla, oakmoss and sandalwood delicately powdered with iris.

Vol de Nuit is the perfume of women who risk everything. It is no coincidence that it is and has been worn by powerful women and entertainment personalities, states Sylvaine Delacourte, celebrated Guerlain nose. Inimitable, surprising and assertive, Vol de Nuit suits both passionate adventuresses and elegant women who particularly love the strength of its floral animalic sillage, perfect with furs as fashion of the era dictated...