Amber · Musk · Leather

Leather

Tanned hide, suede, smoke, quinoline

leather 48 notes 42 materials 3 anchors · thin

What it smells like

Leather in perfume is a reconstruction, not an extract. It is built from birch tar, isobutyl quinoline, castoreum and saffron. That is why leather accords range from smoky and tarry to soft, dry and suede-like, with almost nothing in common.

Where it stops

Leather sits between Smoky and Animalic and takes from both. Which side dominates is the main thing separating one leather fragrance from another.

Smells most like

leather - and in the same register, suederal, nappa leather.

Notes that load on it

Notes from our catalogue whose position on this facet is 0.40 or higher, strongest first. A note is not filed under one facet: it carries a value on all 34 at once, and these are the ones where this axis is doing real work.

Materials that carry it

Real substances, each keyed by its CAS registry number, that an external perfumery vocabulary publishes with a term meaning this facet outright. This is the layer that makes a facet checkable against something outside our own database.

Materials carrying this facet, with registry number, source terms and regulatory status
Material CAS Terms Status
m-cresol CAS 108-39-4 leathery
o-cresol CAS 95-48-7 leathery
quinoline CAS 91-22-5 leathery IFRA
isophorone CAS 78-59-1 leathery IFRA
citronellol CAS 141-25-3 leather IFRA
tetrahydroionol CAS 4361-23-3 leathery
allyl alpha-ionone CAS 79-78-7 leathery
amyl cinnamyl acetate CAS 7493-78-9 leathery
alpha-ethylfurylacrolein CAS 904295-77-8 leathery
3-ethylpyridine CAS 536-78-7 leathery
6-methylquinoline CAS 91-62-3 leathery
2-methyl-1-butanol CAS 137-32-6 leathery
4-tert-butylphenol CAS 98-54-4 leathery IFRA
2-isobutylquinoline CAS 93-19-6 leathery
4-isobutylquinoline CAS 1333-58-0 leathery
6-isobutylquinoline CAS 68198-80-1 leathery
6-sec-butylquinoline CAS 65442-31-1 leathery
2-phenoxyacetaldehyde CAS 2120-70-9 leathery IFRA
5-tert-butylquinoline CAS 61702-91-8 leathery
6-tert-butyl-m-cresol CAS 88-60-8 leathery
2,3-dimethylbenzofuran CAS 3782-00-1 leathery
3,7-dimethyloctan-1-ol CAS 106-21-8 leathery
2,3,3-trimethylindanone CAS 54440-17-4 leathery
4-isopropylcyclohexanol CAS 4621-04-9 leathery
2-methoxy-4-methylphenol CAS 93-51-6 leathery IFRA
4-tert-butylcyclohexanol CAS 21862-63-5 leathery
4-isopropylbenzyl alcohol CAS 536-60-7 leathery IFRA
4-tert-butylcyclohexanone CAS 98-53-3 leathery IFRA
methyl 5-methylsalicylate CAS 22717-57-3 leathery
3-acetyl-2,5-dimethylfuran CAS 10599-70-9 leathery IFRA

Showing 30 of 42. The full set ships with the published standard rather than being paginated here.

Reading the two flags

Declarable means the substance appears in Annex III of the EU Cosmetics Regulation, so it has to be named on the ingredient list once it passes a concentration threshold. IFRA means an IFRA Standard restricts or prohibits its use. Both are facts about the substance, not about any fragrance: a perfume can contain a declarable material below the threshold and never print it, and a restricted material used within its limit is used correctly.

The source also supplies no common name for a large share of materials, so those display as a bare registry number and are ranked last. They are kept because they are real evidence: dropping them would make the vocabulary look better described than it is.

Anchor terms

A facet on its own is just a word we chose. An anchor is what makes it checkable: a term in an external, independently maintained vocabulary of odour descriptions, built for perfumery materials rather than for us. The material list above is drawn from the direct terms only, because a partial term corroborates too weakly to stand as evidence on its own.

Direct Terms that mean this facet outright
  • leather
  • leathery
  • suede
Partial Terms that lean this way but also load elsewhere
  • saffron
Thinly anchored

This facet rests on 3 direct terms, which makes it one of the more likely to move when the crosswalk is revised or a better source is found. It is flagged here rather than presented as equal in weight to a facet held up by nine.

The rest of Amber · Musk · Leather

The other facets in this family. A note can load on any of them at the same time as this one, so they are neighbours rather than alternatives.

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