Vol De Nuit Eau De Toilette

(Rating based off the vintage perfume; read to the end for thoughts on the new formulation) There are two stories to Vol de Nuit. The first is a tale from long ago, and far away. When, in 1933, Jacques Guerlain composed this green floral amber he recycled some materials he’d used many times up to that point, something Guerlain in those early days did very frequently (they composed more flankers in the first 100 or so years of their existence than anything else, but that word wasn’t part of our lexicon yet). The Guerlinade is very much present in Vol de Nuit. The opening contains Guerlain’s signature powdery and misty bergamot, which is always lovely to smell. But, what stands out the most is a green galbanum note, and an orange blossom note that is quite vivid for Guerlain. Bracing excitement and invigoration. In the movements to the heart and the base more of the Guerlinade becomes apparent: typical floral middle notes of carnations and roses, followed by amberic balsams and vanillics - all kept to the Guerlain timbre of lightness, breathability, powderiness, and class. There are three additions that steer Vol de Nuit to a different direction: iris, narcissus, and violet. Thanks largely to the iris in particular, Vol de Nuit’s floral pals relay a “coldness” - think, mainly, the rooty and woody side of iris - that creates an odd contrast to the warmer florals and ambers. It is warm, inviting and heartfelt thanks to the ambers, but also steely, determined, and a bit-uptight thanks to the iris, narcissus, and violet. It is very striking, and certainly one of the most interesting perfumes Guerlain created in that first 100 year period. This also means that it’s one of their more divisive perfumes. Maybe that explains tale number two, from not long ago or far away - very recently, in fact, at one of my local retail counters where I purchased a new formulation of Vol de Nuit EdT, batch code 2023, and found it to be quite awful. Guerlain has seemingly abandoned VdN. The green galbanum, hesperidic, and beautiful orange blossom top is still there, but very short of energy and life; a fleeting couple of minutes at best. Once they disappear, it’s a straight-shot down to the amberic and powdery vanillics, which is where the perfume stays for the entirety of its embarrassing and embarrassingly short life. The heart, both literally and figuratively, of Vol de Nuit is gone. You can sort-of bring the heart back to life if you go really overboard on application (for me it was more than 20 sprays on day three of wearing it, which I fortunately wasn’t needing to leave the house that day), and even then it wasn’t enough to fully overcome this formulation’s insipid character. For the more faithful-to-the-original formulations, of which I fortunately have an EdT and extrait of, top marks indeed. For this new formulation... I can only hope one day Vol de Nuit will be found. Cue the Amelia Earhart jokes, I suppose.

Wow...just wow! To me, this is perfumery perfection. Stemming from a different timeline. Effortlessly and endlessly beautiful. Last decade I’ve been traveling back and forth between designer, niche and indie. Always looking for ‘that one perfume’. During that period, I always thought (after trying many) that ‘vintage perfume’ was not my cup of tea. Although I could appreciate them, they never suited me. Until I tried Vol de Nuit a couple of weeks ago...and now I feel like I have found ‘my long lost love’ again. This perfume evolves and evolves, revealing itself bit by bit. Like an elegant lady who knows what she’s worth. She doesn’t need to prove you anything, but she will reveal her deepest secrets, if you show sincere interest in her. She is not afraid to show her scars and that’s what makes her so strong. This nightflight is almost too gorgeous to describe. In terms of notes I’m also not going to try. But it does smell as calming and as sensual as a summer night. Vol de Nuit is actually very wearable for me. Even though it reminds me of the smell of my sweet grandmother a bit. So definitely some feelings of nostalgia too. But it doesn’t smell dated, or modern for that matter. It smells timeless. As if time stood still that night. It also smells very natural somehow. I don’t get any synthetics on my skin, while I’m very sensitive to that. And I easily get 5+ hours out of this. No massive sillage, but subtle wafts of a dreamy scent. And I think it was supposed to smell like that: airy and dreamy. And that’s exactly what I’m getting, so I consider myself lucky. I would also say that I think you need some life experience to be able to wear and understand Vol de Nuit. No age/gender whatsoever. But life experience: yes. It is, imho, for the ones who live through their pain, and observe it, in stead of identifying with it. And whose heart is big enough to embrace it all. This is what perfumery is all about. Vol de Nuit has a soul. And I am truly grateful to have found this mesmerizing beauty. Somehow it smells like Guerlains best kept secret. And she has been patiently waiting for me to discover her, like a self confident, loving woman would do. Midsummer night’s dream comes to mind too. And I think I should leave it at that...

Vol de Nuit will always have a place in my rotation. It is a memorable fragrance. Spiced green galbanum and citrus are combined with beautiful narcissus, jasmine, and assorted woods. It is a stunning fragrance that is blended very well. It is difficult to pin down with a description of scent notes. Scent note listings can immediately give us valueable information. For instance if you do not like the smell of galbanum, then you will probably not like Vol de Nuit. But that is not a hard and fast rule. Fragrances are to be experienced with our nose and not our eyes. Two perfumes may have the same scent notes but smell entirely different. I also have the extrait of Vol de Nuit which is also beautiful but different. I have had both since 2021. When I first wore Vol de Nuit, I was on the fence about it. I liked it okay and could appreciate it, but I wasn’t sure about it. This summer I spent some quality time with this Guerlain beauty. I wore it in the evenings during my quiet time at home. It was then that I really began to understand Vol de Nuit. It is a complex fragrance that takes the wearer on a journey. It needs time to be appreciated. It is not the sort of fragrance that you put on and run out the door expecting in your face performance. After several days of being mesmerized and captivated by VdN, I decided it would be a beautiful fall fragrance. Today is the 1st day of September and I will be in the passenger seat with Vol de Nuit taking the airways. I get several hours of performance from it. I have decanted part of my bottle so I can carry it with me for reapplication. I recommend two or three sprays initially. If you have long hair you can also spray your hair. Vol de Nuit is not a mouse of a fragrance though so you’ll have to work out the performance for yourself. To my nose Vol de Nuit is nothing like L’heure Bleue. I have LB in both the EDP and EDT. I do not understand the comparison at all. Even looking at the scent profiles on Fragrantica, one can see that they are completely different fragrances from Vol de Nuit. Do not buy either one thinking they will be like the other. Both VdN and LB are unique fragrances and desererve to be treated as such.

Not sure why this says 2021. This particular bottle design is 2021, but this spicy green velvet fragrance is definitely from 1933. I was strictly a L’Heure Bleue fan for years, but this bottle of VdN was my first foray into this Guerlain masterpiece. After watching The Muppets with my niece and seeing Miss Piggy wearing her pearls next to the propeller bottle of VdN I bought the closest thing I could afford. This may be a new batch, but I’ve since bought vintages to compare and while the IFRA has all but demolished the use of everything but synthetic notes: THIS IS GORGEOUS. It smells the same as the previous bee bottles, only slightly more green and a little longer longevity. I’ve found that VdN in anything other than the Extrait doesn’t have massive sillage (even the Extrait quietly wafts with movement), but the EDT is a quiet beautiful and WARM hug. It starts off with the spicy green galbanum sprinkled like a warm rain with bergamot. It quickly moves to a lush green resinous powder that smells absolutely elegant and regal. This particular bottle and formulation gets 6-8 hours on my skin and clothing before I have to lean in and really sniff to get to it. It stays close to the skin, but sparkles like green fairy dust from a forest nymph getting ready to go to a midnight party in the woods. Thierry Wasser is a master of reformulation and keeping the heart of these masterpieces as close as possible to the original and he did this one right. This is slightly better than the bee in my opinion although with VdN I reach for and buy any bottle my little wallet can afford. As Miss Piggy said “Moiiii?”. Yes Miss Piggy...moi too. 😂

This new version of Vol De Nuit EDT is miles apart from the earlier EDT in the bee bottle. I have both, and it is, at least in the opening, like two different scents. The new version is airy, ephemeral, theoretical almost, while the bee bottle version is machine like, crude, and earthy. Where the new version bears resemblance with vintage Chanel no. 5 at first, the bee bottle version makes you think of alcohol based wind shield washer fluid. The powdery flowery dry down is more similar in the two versions I own, but still quite far from each other in quality (the new version being more complex and nuanced). To be fair, the bee bottle version is perhaps closest to the narrative of VdN, in going towards the smell of metall and motor vehicle fluids, but the new version captures the scent of night better, with wafts of cold humid air traced by flowers, greenery and dust settling down after a busy day in the city. I tend to wear the new version by day though, since it is in a master class of its own, and the bee bottle version before bedtime, because its mechanistic simplicity is strangely comforting.

I have a special relationship with Vol de nuit, vintage or new. From the very first time, it reminded me of the smell that wafted through my grandmother's big house. She died when I was little, so it's an old memory: a sweet, golden, powdery, green bliss. My grandmother was an elegant, classic and very well educated woman, rich middle-class. She was also very unlucky in love, her husband was continually unfaithful and she was too polite or too pride to complain about it. I am very happy to discover that under the varnish of her strict education, she was subversive enough to choose a dream perfume, something adventurous and free, a story of St Exupery flying in the open night sky. This perfume reconciles me with the women of my family, so elegant, so perfect and also so lonely. Someone who wears Vol de Nuit’s night flight cannot have abdicated, and cannot have completely lost her soul. She sows the seeds of this freedom that her daughters will grow, and her granddaughters after them.

In my early 20s I was into French literature. Antoine Saint-exupéry's Vol de Nuit was the very one that got me started. I knew there was a perfume named after the novel. As a frag-head, of course I went to a department store and sniffed it. I remember the disappointment... It smelled a lot like Shalimar which I couldn't understand back then. Now. three decades later, Vol de Nuit smells like 2/3 Jicky and 1/3 Miss Dior Originale. It's magically delicate, proudly old, and quietly beautiful. ....and, regretfully fleeting. I wish it would stay a bit longer, but it would be noticeable only for 3 hours or so. Well. I am not the type of woman who wants to fill the room with her perfume, or who thinks the value of fragrance is measured only by its potency, so I will keep buying Vol de Nuit as long as it's available.

This was a love at first sniff. Les Légendaires are painfully difficult to find in the country where I live, but I've had a few travel opportunities in the past couple of months that finally gave me the chance to sniff out as many of them in the collection as possible. Vol de Nuit wasn't something that was on my radar at first, but when I came across this, I immediately had to try it on my skin - I was sold very quickly after. Green and powdery, the scent is absolutely divine but unfortunately it becomes a skin scent (albeit still a beautiful one) too quickly. On my skin, it does stay on for pretty long as a sensual, spicy and powdery scent, but I wish the grassy galbanum opening stayed a little longer and that it would project for longer. Would love to find a vintage bottle of this at some point!

I love the name and appearance of this fragrance, the name conjures up some sort of evening romance, a passionate affair, unfortunately, by the time you get down the stairs to meet your intende, all trace of it would have gone, and you're wishing you'd sprayed Samsara instead. It is lovely, I'd say this is similar in a way to Cologne du Coq, not similar in terms of smell, but how I'd use it, just after a bath or shower, to feel clean, fresh and awake. Truly after about 15 minutes, it had all but gone, and my bottle has been away in a cupboard for about 2 years. I get powdery iris, bergamot and vanilla, but sadly not for very long. I tried layering on top of Shalimar soufflé, it still didn't linger for very long. Beautiful, but longevity is dire.

I blind bought this because I read that Katherine Hepburn wore it and oh my god it's so pretty. It smells exactly like one of those old giant powder puffs that came in a tin filled with high end body powder. It's so vintage glamorous. It makes me emotional. It reminds me of how my mother used to smell right before she'd Go Out proper... she'd be so beautiful, like entirely fussy gussied up and she'd say something nice to the babysitter and then she and my father would leave and the house would be scented like her for an hour after she was gone. It opens really sharp and you gotta give it a minute, but it’s the most powder puff powdery perfume I’ve ever smelled.

Vol de Nuit EDT (bee bottle version) opens with a symphony. It possesses one of the most wonderful top notes I've ever encountered. The core is woody and delicate, tamed spices. The dry-down is something very rare: not powdery but deliciously soapy, resulting in an epitome of warm, amiable cleanness. It's about my perceptions which take sterile scents as dehumanized, even borderline intimidating, especially the ill-judged presence of neroli. Vol de Nuit works exactly the opposite. Not only does it smell comforting, but if sprayed on clothes it preserves and radiates its welcoming cleanness for hours.

Well done! Every time bottles change, we all fear our favorite perfumes will inevitably change as well. This is my first post 2021 bottle and it's all good. Bee one was good too. We all keep vintage one, the one we fell in love with, for reference. The problem is, if properly stored, most old Guerlains age beautifully. Those with oriental base, like this one. So, keep in mind that all new bottles appear deluted at first. Wait 6 months and that will change. I'm very happy with my latest bottle. Batch code 5C01 or March 2025.

Basically some people do not know when this perfume were made lol it’s meant to be a vintage smell hahha for myself I do really enjoy vintage and green perfumes for example : N5/N19 hahaha I bought Vol de nuit and Liu at the same time god I’m in love... kinda find Guerlain and Chanel were competing starting from the 20’s hahhaa nevertheless for those who enjoy N19 like I do I think you’d probably love this fragrance !! Been thinking lately should I purchase the parfum version!!!! The bottle is to die for

Such a nice scent. It reminds me L'Heure Bleu: it seems to be a lighter, simpler, less colourful and less sweet version of that. So those who want a richer experience should try L'Heure Bleu. At the same time, Vol de Nuit itself seems to be a richer and more colourful version of Bvlgari's Aqva Divina. The name Vol de Nuit (its translation) has no connection for me. It is just a nice and enjoyable scent. It doesn't last long though which is a bit sad.

This new "légendaires" version opens up better and lasts longer when oversprayed a bit. UPDATE 1 year later: Wow, this is way better in terms of performance - lasts the whole day + overnight with more notes I can track. Musks in the base?? Or is it the patchouli? Whatever it is, but so sensual and overall amazing!

Incense smelling.. marvelous , emotional journey to the past. Smells like women before Mcdonalds and shopping malls, before high production and sneakers... If you have L’heure bleue you dont necesserely need this one. They are practicly the same. Love the both and I do have both of them🙂

Vol de Nuit smells like a walk through a meadow on a summer night. The air is soft and a bit humid and the gentle breeze brings smells of grass, roots, flowers and soil. It is the most meditative perfume I know, melancholic, peaceful, beautiful. Une âme solitaire, this one.

I really don't know how the old formula was,but i must say that this flight in the night must be a flight to Heaven!What a beauty,what a fine perfume poetry,slightly green,magic powder and edible almondy sweetness.Gorgeous!

A pale and light shadow of Vol de Nuit, the most intellectual perfume of all time. Abstract, ethereal and ephemeral beauty.

I have yet to smell vintage Vol de Nuit, of which I believe this is a pared-back version. While I collect vintage perfume and have a love for vintage Guerlain in particular, I like that Guerlain have re-released EDT versions of their classics, as it will hopefully result in new appreciation and interest in great perfumes. I have a small sample of VN, dating from recent years (not 2021, but a recent formulation nonetheless. I think the dates here are just for the new bottle design). VN (or at least this version) is a narcissus scent at heart, beautifully composed with carefully chosen notes to complement the narcissus. VN opens with musty green notes, somehow dusty yet reminiscent of rain at the same time. It smells like petrichor; the smell of ground that has recently been rained on. More specifically, tart bergamot and dusty green galbanum make up the opening, with petitgrain complementing the green accord after a little while. It is a captivating opening, not universally or instantly appealing, but all the better for it. The narcissus at the heart is realistic - polleny, grassy and smoky - very similar to the daffodils planted in our garden at this time of the year. Spicy notes enhance the headiness of the narcissus, while an unusually restrained jasmine rounds out the floral component in the background. Vanilla adds sweetness, complementing it beautifully. As it dries down, a soft Guerlinade accord emerges, thanks to the vanilla, amber and soft spices, enhanced by powdery iris and a pinch of patchouli. It is sweet, earthy goodness, with a lovely soft, dry amber accord in the background. Soft woody notes add some depth to the drydown. Sillage is weak-to-moderate and longevity is reasonably moderate, but it is a light and discreet scent. Unisex despite the marketing, VN is a lovely narcissus-centric scent, inoffensive and ideal for daytime use, despite the name. Springtime softness in a bottle. I must compare it to the vintage version. 3.5/5.