After the Big Bruisers of the 80s, so ingrained into the decade of decadence and carnality, leather scents took a back seat until the modern fragrance niche phenomenon erupted like a well-oiled explosive mechanism, issuing forgotten ripples into the st…

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Continue reading → Leather Series 12: the Modern Leathers

On an ordinary morning on an ordinary weekday in Paris this past June, a rumour started to ripple through the mirrored design studios, the gilded, glossy magazine offices and the cramped workrooms of the French fashion industry. “Have you heard?” whispered voices ominous with impending ill news.”The police found a body on Rue de Bellechasse this morning.” “Have you heard?” they whispered, “about

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Continue reading → Montana Parfum de Peau

Perfume directions often go the way of fashion trends and lifestyle choices, which sometimes translates as going the way of the dodo, and this is nowhere more obvious than in the leather scents that emerged in the late 70s and during the 80s. After the brief optimism of the mid-60s, the world entered a grim period of oil crisis, economic downfall and the threat of the planet suffering nuclear

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Continue reading → Leather Series 11: the Big Bruisers

“Did I disappoint you or let you down?
Should I be feeling guilty or let the judges frown?
‘Cause I saw the end before we’d begun,
Yes, I saw you were blinded and I knew I had won.
So I took what’s mine by eternal right.
Shared your dreams and shared your bed. I know you well, I know your smell”.

~James Blunt, Goodbye my lover

A name that combines two contrasting elements : the girly (Miss)

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Continue reading → Almost a Miss

“Headstrong” or “stubborn” is not the first thing that comes to mind when I contemplate on my mother’s personality. Yet it was the formidable, petulant perfume thus named, Cabochard, that had won her heart and ~along with Dioressence~ became her insignia. The Grecian-inspired fluted designs of Madame Grès which were cut directly on the body would have suited the Dorian drama of her beauty. Her

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Continue reading → Lament for a Fragrance in Sepia

As far as leather scents are concerned, the image prevailing in the first half of the 20th century was either one of emancipation and amazonesque flair or of luxurious leather goods and upholstery of posh venues catering to the tastes of the upper classes. Little by little something emerged from the fashion and cinematic world: a new frame of mind that distanced itself from the more traditionally

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Continue reading → Leather Series 10: Les Gamines

At Hermès, craftsmen work with various luxurious materials: Barenia calfskin, Mysore goat (chèvre Mysore), and taurillon Clémence, as well as lizard, ostrich and crocodile skins. One of them is “Veau velours Doblis” suede. This suede comes from a variety of cowhide that is treated in such a way as to render the most velvety, buttery tactile feel on the hand.

As I pass outside the boutique Hermès

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Continue reading → Better Butter?

“A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears”.~Getrude Stein

It is perhaps fitting that a review of Jolie Madame, the leathery fragrance by Germain Cellier created for couturier Pierre Balmain in 1953 should start with a quote by one of his famous clients who graced this perfume with her preference over others. Like Stein herself, Jolie Madame bypasses jolie (=pretty)

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Continue reading → The Case of the Jolie-Laide Madame

After the ravages of WWII, which brought real emancipation to women through their en masse contribution to the workforce and the uniformity of vote throughout the western world, people were now free to revert to more conservative models of life. In that regard, fashion and its cultural sensibilities that pertain to fragrances followed suit. Women craved glamour and style after the privasions of

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Continue reading → Leather Series 9: leather scents of the 50s

It was 1944, when WWII was at its most crucial stages with the battle of Monte Cassino, the fall of Rome to the Allies, the maiden flight of the Bristol Brigand and subsequently D-day that Robert Piguet had sent his models down the runway brandishing knives, toy revolvers and masks like highwaymen, like outlaws. And it was this occasion that prompted Germaine Cellier to grab the models’ knickers

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Continue reading → Outlaws and Brigands: Bandit by Piguet

Lore has shaped the imagination of many in reference to the secrets of the Great Pyramid of Egypt: hidden passages, curses cast upon intruders, mystical symbols and astronomical calculations far ahead of their times. More Sphinx-like than the actual Sphinx, the Great Pyramid still holds some of its secrets to this day.

Djedi by Guerlain ,”the driest perfume of all time” according to Roja Dove

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Continue reading → Magicians and Pharaohs: Djedi by Guerlain

by guest writer Denyse BeaulieuThough the fashion pendulum swung back to femininity, away from the androgynous styles of the Garçonnes towards a more traditionally feminine silhouette ~waists, breasts and hips caressed by bias-cut satin, bobs set in p…

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Continue reading → A Smooth Leather for the Tough Thirties: Lanvin Scandal

Whenever I think of Cuir de Russie by Chanel I think of a particular place and a woman I once saw. She is of Slavic features, quite old and she must have been beautiful at her prime. Now the fallen features speak of a splendour gone by, an existence th…

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Continue reading → Cuir de Russie by Chanel: fragrance review and history

by guest writer Denyse BeaulieuTabac Blond was the opening salve of the garçonnes’ raid on gentlemen’s dressing tables. Its name evokes the “blonde” tobacco women had just started smoking in public (interestingly, Marlboros were launched as a …

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Continue reading → Leather Series 8: The Garçonne Leathers of the 1920s (part 2)

by guest writer Denyse Beaulieu “She is a strong woman. Excuse – strength is not the word I am after. Women, pretty women at least, are never ‘strong”. I need a word that expresses energy, the quality that makes a man who speaks of ‘frail Eve…

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Continue reading → Leather Series 7: The Garçonne Leathers of the 1920s

By guest writer Denyse Beaulieu“The glove (…) had retained a strong odour, this distinctive musky odour which the girl’s favourite perfume, heliotrope, sweetened with a touch of vanilla; (…) violently aroused by this blend of flower and flesh, …

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Continue reading → Leather Series 6: Kinky whiffs

Among leather fragrances in the past there were two major schools of thought. Both sealed their era with their characteristic flair: the Russian leather types and the Spanish leather types. The two present their own idiosyncrasies, like spirited people…

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Continue reading → Leather Series 5: Cuir de Russie vs Peau d’Espagne

by guest writer Denyse Beaulieu For centuries, leather and scent have gone hand in hand; and for centuries, that hand was sheathed in the finest of gloves… Like his predecessors on Western thrones from Catarina di Medici onwards, King George II…

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Continue reading → Leather Series 4: A touch of Regal Stench

Rendering a leather note in perfumery is a challenge for the perfumer who must coax this difficult and cult note into submission to make it sing with the rest of the composition. Production relies on two different courses: naturally derived and synthes…

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Continue reading → Leather Series 3: Production

It wouldn’t be inaccurate to claim that French perfumery owes its birth to the malodorous tanning process and its nauseating smell of decay. Shocking as this statement might sound, it is nonetheless true.Tanning requires the use of nitrogenous waste …

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Continue reading → Leather Series 2: Scented Leather and its Origins

The aroma of leather in scent is akin to smelling a forest of silver birches in the cold ringing air for the first time, inhaling the insides of a pallisander humidor full of “Cohiba” accompanied with a good malt in a tumbler. It’s the razor strap …

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Continue reading → Leather Series 1: Definition and Classification