Essential Information
Founded: 1904
Founder: Ernest Daltroff
Official website: English (Japanese distributor)
A Brand with Global Ambitions from the Start
Founder Ernest Daltroff (in Japanese) had no connection to the perfume industry. When his menswear shop went bankrupt, he remembered the scent of the perfume his mother used to put on him before bed as a child and decided to become a perfumer. Without undertaking any particular perfumery training, he first acquired the perfume brand Maison Emilia in 1903. The following year, 1904, he founded a company with his younger brother and bought a perfume business called Mercerie Parfumerie Caron. With a global market already in mind, he slightly altered its name to “Parfums Caron,” a name that anyone could easily remember and pronounce in any language.
In 1906, he met Félicie Wanpouille, who would later become Caron’s artistic director. She worked as a milliner near Caron’s shop. What began with her introducing her clients to the house eventually developed into a partnership with Daltroff that produced remarkable creations such as Narcisse Noir, Tabac Blond, and Pour Un Homme.
After opening a boutique in New York in 1923, Daltroff remained in the city until his death in 1941.
Around 1916, when Félicie Wanpouille was 42, she was secretly in love with Daltroff, with whom she had worked for ten years. Daltroff was aware of her feelings, but apparently work kept him too busy for them to talk properly. That year, he launched a fragrance called N’Aimez Que Moi (“Love Only Me”) and gave Félicie a scented powder of the same name.
In the end, however, he married another woman in 1923.
Carrying the Vision Forward
After founder Ernest Daltroff’s death, Félicie Wanpouille, her husband Jean Bergaud, and Michel Morsetti, who had worked as Daltroff’s assistant, took over and continued releasing perfumes.
After Wanpouille retired, the house changed hands several times through mergers and acquisitions: Revillon Freres acquired it in 1962, L.T. Piver in 1997, Ales Groupe the following year, and Cettleya Finance in 2018. Before the 1997 acquisition, a manager who had come from Jean Patou tried to restore Caron to its former glory, but he received no cooperation at all, and the house appears to have been written off.
As for the perfumers, Ales Groupe was a cosmetics company and put considerable effort into the house. After acquiring it, the group brought in Richard Fraysse, son of André Fraysse (in Japanese), as its in-house perfumer (a perfumer dedicated to the house (in Japanese)). In 2016, Richard’s son William Fraysse succeeded him in that role.
The 2018 acquisition, however, would bring another change of in-house perfumer. The new appointee was Jean Jacques, who had spent 22 years at Takasago (in Japanese) and composed Kenzo’s Totem Blue (2015) and L’Orchestre Parfum (in Japanese)’s Piano Santal (2019). There had also been talk of an acquisition by LVMH, and fans apparently feared that a change of parent company might mean changes to the fragrances. The owner of Cattleya Finances, however, had long worn Caron, and since the acquisition the house has been managed with even greater care to preserve its brand value.
