Tabac Blond
Caron (1919)

I wrote the following in early September 2021, a fortnight after having found an old, original 1920s bottle in a local vintage emporium. Having contacted the house they have verified that it is indeed an original bottle, and it is one of, if not the most of my treasured vintage finds. Originally posted - let's call it elsewhere - this is what I wrote then:

A fortnight ago I chanced upon a 1920s vintage bottle of Tabac Blond, along with ditto vintage bottles of Arpege and Ma Griffe in a vintage/curiosities and antiques shop I'd not been to before, all of them nearly full and at peppercorn prices. Needless to say, they now reside with me. Caron themselves have confirmed the bottle is of an early 1920s vintage, so I am obviously more than delighted with my find.

Having allowed the bottle this time to settle into its new environs, I'm wearing this gem today, a brief review of it follows, with apologies for the slight hyperbole - but trust me, truly is this good.



Tabac Blond is incredible and perfect. Heady, strong, absolutely wonderfully lush and beyond anything else that I own. I honestly hadn't dared to hope for this. Despite its age (and, let's face it - a 100-year-old perfume has the right to be a little fatigued of an evening), Tabac Blond performs like the divinity she is, with no time for lesser mortals or those who dare to cross her path. The smoothest leather, the spiciest carnation and vetiver with every additional note discernible still. I can only imagine how shocking wearing this would have been when it was launched, how powerful it would have made the wearer feel. Richly emotional; warm, sultry, sharp and lovely - *this* is perfume.

Heavenly.

It's not attractive to me and nowadays it seems a very old and repetitive thing. As a tobacco lover, I got a decant of it; But I didn't find any resemblance to tobacco (at least pipe tobacco and cigarettes) in it. It's just an old leathery-floral feminine fragrance.

Few fragrances stir me up into nostalgia and reverie as Tabac Blond. Maybe it's the languorous linden blossom, honeyed, mildly sweet, somewhat tart, or its the room-filling carnation, or perhaps the cool and musing iris. It could very well be the usage of the De Laire Mousse de Saxe base to full effect: this accord combines geranium, anise, isobutyl quinoline (IBQ) for a leather effect, heliotropin, vetiver and vanillin. The base makes fragrances such as Tabac Blond open an arresting, anisic green leading to a dark, somewhat sweet, woody and powdery, dry down.

The heart has a heady ylang ylang accompanying the carnation, shaded with a cedar and rendered somewhat smoky through the vetiver in the base. You may ask, where is the tobacco? Well, during the early 20th century, the impression of tobacco was a matter of "trompe le nez," a summation that results in the impression rather than any usage of materials deriving directly from tobacco. What matters is that it feels like tobacco, and I'd argue it does so even more so than many tobacco-centric scents of today that will use dollops of Nicotania Virginiana absolute and lots of modern materials to build an often blunt or obtuse accord.

Truly, I cannot do any more justice than my friend Ida Meister in highlighting Tabac Blond. I recommend you read her marvelous article on Cafleurbon. I am a bit envious of her vintage; however, the EDP bottle I have in my possession from I'd say, maybe 15 plus years ago, blows out of the water many modern releases that barely manage to capture the same spirit.

If it’s true that Jacques Guerlain used Coty’s Emeraude as the template for Shalimar, Coty didn’t take the moral highground for long, he went and did the same thing to Ernest Daltroff.
He took the flowers and leather of Tabac Blond,
he had Vincent Roubert tart them up with strawberry,
and he called it Knize Ten.
As in the previous episode, the outcome was an improvement on the original: i.e. this is good but Knize Ten is better.

I wonder, why Basenotes says that Tabac Blond gender is feminine? According to Caron web site, Ernest Daltroff created this scent for men in 1919. Men were apparently not very keen on this then novel scent, so Daltroff turned his ad campaign to women, and hit the jackpot; women were craving for this scent. So,all you men out there, Tabac Blond was originally created for you, and there is no excuse not to try this ethereal concoction yourself. You might be surprised,to find this over 100 years old parfum truly ageless, divine, dandy, and manly. Highly recommended.

I recently acquired the extrait of Tabac Blond (2021) and it doesn't feel the same. For me, it's instantly recognizable when you are familar with it. It's instant rush of carnations and a powdery leatheriness. This recent edition has scaled it back further. At first, I thought I smelled lily of the valley and there is NO predonimant note of LOTV in Tabac Blond, NONE. But I think it's something else now, I'm not sure what it is, it's maddening. It smells kind of contemporary like there was ambroxan or something?! I'm just not sure. And using ambroxan would be WAY TOO SACRILEDGE!
Well, I'm familar with older versions of TB and they are much more beautiful than this. I have some older Eau de Toilette from the mid 2000s and an older eau de cologne version circa 60s as well as the early 2010s Eau de Parfum, all of those smell fairly consisent with Tabac Blond. But this version, not so much. It's a bit of a drag since I did buy the 100 ml. Extrait and IT IS NOT CHEAP. I'm figuring to just wear this extait and spritz some of the beautiful Eau de Toilette I own to round it out.
Final chapter, a really sad way to make a 100 years old classic scent and deface it once and for all. I wished it were otherwise. I'm not holding high hopes on the future of Caron with this output.
Tabac Blond is officially dead.