Morocco Leather

Note Profile

Prepared

Drag to turn On Note Island

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

Morocco Leather smells smooth and dry, a vegetable-tanned leather rather than a tarry one, closer to bookbinding than to a saddle. A dry, woody tannin note comes from the sumac used to tan it, with a faintly resinous edge. It has a soft, powdery pliability, closer to suede than to hide, and none of the smoke or animal warmth that heavier leathers carry.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeBase · ~24h lasting

Family Amber · Musk · Leather

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

WorldSee it in Note Island

ScentArt

What is ScentArt?

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.