Ernest Daltroff: The Pioneering Fragrances He Created for Caron

A Life in Perfumery

Daltroff, whose full name was Ernest Léon René Lucien Daltroff, was born on November 17, 1867, in Sainte-Cecile in the Saône-et-Loire region of France. He came from a middle-class Russian family. When he was a child, his mother, Ida-Caroline Bing, would put one drop of her perfume behind her son’s ear before bed.

Daltroff, who frequently traveled through the Middle East, South America, and Panama in his youth, ran a menswear shop at 67 rue de Lévis. The shop went bankrupt in 1896, but, recalling his childhood scent memories, he decided to become a perfumer without any training. In 1903, together with his younger brother Raoul, he acquired the perfume brand Maison Emilia in Asnières-sur-Seine and established a workshop.
In 1904, at the age of 37, Daltroff founded his own company at 10 rue de la Paix in Paris. Already thinking in terms of a global market, the Daltroff brothers borrowed the name of Mercerie Parfumerie Caron, which they had acquired from Anne-Marie Caron in 1903. They called their company Parfums Caron, a short, memorable name that was easy to pronounce in any language.

In 1906, he met a woman named Félicie Wanpouille, who worked as a milliner nearby. She introduced his perfumes to her own customers and gradually became Caron’s muse. As artistic director, she also designed Caron’s bottles, helping bring such masterpieces as Narcisse Noir, released in 1911, into being.

When he launched Tabac Blond in 1919, it won the support of modern women who smoked. In 1934, at a time when many men used cologne, he launched Pour Un Homme in the belief that men, too, should wear perfume. Daltroff’s foresight was perfectly attuned to the times.

In 1923, Daltroff opened a boutique at Saks Fifth Avenue in New York. At the height of his success, he married a woman named Madeleine Briet (1988 – 1987).

In 1939, Daltroff moved to Canada and then New York to escape Nazi persecution. He died in New York on February 3, 1941. He appears to have left the French operation in the hands of Félicie and Michel Morsetti, a perfumer whom he had trained.

Perfume Creations

Daltroff’s character is clearly apparent in fragrances that might even be described as violent. With his cultivated social background, he was deeply influenced by the artistic movements of his time: the movement in which Fauvist, Impressionist, and Pointillist painters consigned traditional academic realist painting to the dustbin of history. I am convinced that this movement was the driving force behind his creativity.

Guy Robert

As he created perfumes only for Caron, every perfume listed below is a Caron fragrance.