Russian Leather

Note Profile

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About

Russian Leather is the leather style the trade also calls Cuir de Russie. It is built on rectified birch tar, so it is smoky and animalic in the way plain leather is. What sets it apart is a floral heart. Rose and jasmine run through the accord and soften the tar without covering it.

Scent Profile

Russian Leather smells of tanned leather and dense birch-tar smoke, with a carbolic, medicinal edge underneath. A clear animal warmth sits under the smoke, sweaty rather than clean. Over the top runs a floral heart: rose gives a rounded body and jasmine adds a white floral lift, both softening the tar without covering it.

ScentWheel

Breadthmedium

EnvelopeBase · ~36h lasting

Family Amber · Musk · Leather, Woody & Earthy, Floral

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

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Materials That Can Make This Note

Perfumers can build Russian Leather from materials such as:

6-sec-butylquinoline chalky · mossy · oakmoss

Smell words come from published sources.

A given perfume with this note may use some of these, or something else.

Origin

The style is named after Russia leather, a hide cured with birch tar. Perfume Shrine records the traditional process: tanners softened dried hide with birch tar and the fat of sea animals, and rubbed silver birch into Cossack riding boots to keep the wet out. The perfumery material is a compounded base, not a distillate of hide. Rectified birch tar carries the smoke, and rose and jasmine are built over it. Fraterworks sells it as a classical leather base. No manufacturer datasheet from Givaudan, Firmenich, IFF or Symrise was found for it.

Usage in Perfumery

Used as a base to give a composition a smoky, worn-leather floor that still has a floral heart. Fraterworks calls it a sweeter alternative to raw birch tar smoke, so it is the choice when tar alone would be too harsh. It sits under rose, jasmine, iris and spice, and it is the signature of the classical leather chypre.