Italian Leather

Note Profile

Prepared

About

Italian Leather is the soft, sweet, green-topped end of the leather family: glove or vachetta leather rather than tanned hide. It is warmed by vanilla and resin and is explicitly not animalic. It is the opposite pole from Russian Leather's birch tar.

Scent Profile

Leather leads, but smooth and velvety, described by one reviewer who has smelled the same house's tarry entries as green and not animalic at all. Sweet vanillic is nearly as strong and is the spine the leather wraps around; one reviewer calls vanilla the only vertical note in the whole thing. Amber resinous follows from myrrh, opoponax and ciste, which take over the deep drydown and turn it antique. Green sits on top from tomato leaf, crisp and fresh rather than sappy. Powdery comes from a buttery orris heart. Aromatic herbal runs through from clary sage and wormwood. An earthy loam facet is reported by two of the three sources. Under there is a modest smoky tarriness, dry and creamy wood, and small fresh and warm spice from pink pepper and juniper. Animalic is scored rather than zero only because a source stated its absence outright.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeBase · ~20h lasting

Family Amber · Musk · Leather, Sweet & Gourmand

Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.

Origin

A constructed accord, not a material. Every source found describes one commercial instance, Memo Paris' Cuirs Nomades entry, where a leather accord is laid under green tomato leaf, juniper berry and pink pepper and over myrrh, opoponax, ciste and vanilla absolute. The leather accord itself is proprietary, so no manufacturer olfactive description exists for it.

Usage in Perfumery

Used as a base note where a formula wants leather without harshness, so it can sit under vanilla, orris and resins that tarry leather would fight. It is the leather to choose when the composition must stay wearable and warm rather than sharp.