You’ve Never Smelled a Leather Fragrance Like This Before

3 min read

When you think of a leather fragrance, your mind might immediately flit to a dark bar, a stiff drink, and curls of smoke. In perfume, its notes are seen as sexy (maybe even a little dirty). It’s a night-out scent or one you might wear on a third date. But that wasn’t always the case.

Imagine Paris in the late 12th century. Philip II reigned, and the city was starting to come into its own: The streets were paved, the Louvre was built (then as a fortress), and the University of Paris was established. Leather was everywhere—it was used for bookbinding, clothing, and furniture. Just one problem: It smelled awful. The aroma was intense and animalic, and tanneries removed the hair on it using urine. But leather’s unpleasant odor is actually how the material got tangled up with perfume. “To cover that horrible smell, they used to scent it with pure perfumes composed with long-lasting notes like vanilla and wood,” says Francis Kurkdjian, perfume creation director at Parfums Christian Dior.

Jumping to the 16th century, gloves became the most commonly perfumed leather items, as they were popular gifts. Catherine de’ Medici was known for wearing fragranced gloves from Tuscany. In 1760, James Henry Creed (a tailor at the time, who then went on to create his eponymous fragrance house) bestowed a scented pair of gloves to King George III. From there, it became positively associated with good smells. “Leather scents have a cool vibe that is sophisticated and different,” says Linda Levy, president of the Fragrance Foundation.

Curiously, the scent of “leather” as we know it today—musky, deep, smoky, slightly sweet—is in fact birch tar. According to Kurkdjian, it has origins in the Russian army in the 1920s, when it was used to coat all leather goods to make them waterproof. Birch tar has a distinct scent. “It smells like a smoky, woody ash,” says Kurkdjian, and it became the bedrock of leather fragrances—it’s phenolic and deep. A century later, it’s “having a moment right now in scent,” says Levy, noting that the new fragrances have playful twists like fruits or florals, oud notes, or spices like ginger. Dior’s newest La Collection Privée perfume, Cuir Saddle, is one that offers a unique take.

Cuir Saddle, imagined by Kurkdjian, is inspired by the house’s iconic Saddle bag, and is not animalic or musky. The leather note is not dark, but infused with light notes like white florals, synthetic musks, amber, and woods. It makes the fragrance feel more like suede—it smells soft and fluffy rather than sharp and deep. It is clean in a pristine way, like a sheet of blank paper. Speaking of its creation, Kurkdjian was inspired by leather’s closeness to skin. “You wear the Saddle bag close to the body,” says Kurkdjian. “It almost melts with the body and becomes one with it.” The overall effect offers a levity and sense of airiness that most leather scents lack.

If Cuir Saddle proves anything, it’s not just that leather has come a long way. It’s also that the note has the ability to morph and evolve. And if a scent that’s been around forever still has the capacity to surprise and delight, that’s worth something.