Morocco Leather

Note Profile

Prepared

About

Morocco leather is goatskin tanned with sumac and hand-boarded into a pinhead grain. In perfumery the name asks for a smooth, dry, vegetable-tanned leather rather than the tarry kind. The smoke and the animal edge that define birch-tar leathers are not part of its process, so the note sits closer to a bookbinding than to a saddle.

Scent Profile

Leather is the only facet any source states directly, through Parfumo's category and one reviewer's 'smooth leather'. Everything else is read off the tanning method and is held low with a wide spread because of that. Dry_woody is the vegetable tannin: sumac is a plant tan and tannin reads dry and woody rather than sweet. Powdery is the softness and pliability both sources name, which is the facet that separates this from the tarry leathers and puts it near suede and blond leather. Amber_resinous follows Première Peau's 'faintly resinous' for sumac itself. Below the naming line, smoky sits at only- the single review that mentions smoke credits the vetiver, and no source connects smoke to this tanning process. Animalic, tobacco_hay, earthy and clean_musk are the ordinary background of any finished hide. Sour keeps a trace of sumac's tartness without claiming it survives the tan, which no source confirms.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeBase · ~24h lasting

Family Amber · Musk · Leather

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

Origin

CAMEO (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) describes it as 'a glossy, pebble-grain goatskin tanned with sumac'. The tanning agent is vegetable, not chrome and not birch tar. Wikipedia adds that the leather is prized for 'softness, pliability, and ability to take color'. CAMEO also records that the term has drifted: it now covers most vegetable-tanned goatskins with an artificial pebble grain.

Usage in Perfumery

Parfumo files it under the parent category Leather and says it 'often occurs in the base note'. It appears in 19 perfumes there. In Calvin Klein Defy it sits in the heart next to suede, and a reviewer reads it as 'a smooth leather' with only a slight smoky nuance that they attribute mainly to the vetiver in the base.