Oro 1920 Bois 1920 2013

In my note to this fragrance was for a long time "--> Test as a potentially particularly good leather fragrance". From a dear perfumer I once got a sample, which initially landed in my box for blind tests. (Let's not fool ourselves: I am quite suggestible, which is why I have acquired this trick to give many fragrances first the chance to meet me free of images, names and expectations.)

So I reached on an autumn day at almost 20 degrees and rainy-windy weather in the blind test box, sprayed with squinting eye to catch just no name on my forearm - and was pleased that I had obviously caught a fragrance, which could well fit today.

Beautiful, slightly cool resin notes make me immediately think of incense. There is briefly something fruity in the opening, more sweet than sour, more "flat" than "voluminous"... A cool pear? Unripe banana? Flavorless raspberry? Papaya??
With time, the resin gets a tiny bit warmer. I'm nowhere near the typically opulent amber notes [spoiler: not even by the end], but it's also not as cool and short of pungent as it was at the beginning. It keeps itself wonderfully in between in a very fine balance. Mmh, there I have probably just caught a really nice, unexcited incense scent.
1.5 h rum and I wonder if there is vanilla in the game? Now and then there are still discreet fruit approaches. Overall, it remains but the resin.

Then I look up... Scroll to the fragrance notes...
And tear the eyes open.
Ok, the different resins have definitely arrived at me, but -
I see my note... "--> Test as a potentially particularly good leather scent"
I'm sorry, what? Leather? That's what this should actually be about?
I sniff and sniff, press at some point panic nose against my arm, fear already acute olfactory dysfunction of my olfactory organ.... I get no leather.
Finally, I run off and hold me everything under the nose, what I can find in a hurry at leather: Belt, bag, jacket, hat, shoes, gloves, backpack, wallet - everything smells different, some very intense leathery, others barely perceptible. Nothing seems comparable to Oro 1920.

Phew, so, if I SHOULD think leather here, then comes to mind most likely freshly waxed outer leather of somewhat brittle hiking boots. [Look at: there is even beeswax listed as a base note.] But even that is somehow far-fetched.
But calm blood. We are not yet at the end of the line here...
The longer the skin had time to warm up the whole thing a bit, the sooner it works with the leather association: a leather chair, whose cool surface does not really want to allow me to sink into the relaxation that its shape might offer me. Or the smell of a leather apron, which is blown by the cool wind during indeterminate forest work between slightly resinous trunks to me now and then.
If I turn up the heat so right - say: sit down with the sprayed arm for a while next to the heater - suddenly emerges an almost animal note. Since I'm with the nose sometimes in the fur, sometimes on sweaty skin - and finally the vanilla comes through so properly.
With all that I associate and discover there so: the resinous notes remain omnipresent in my nose.

Well, leather is nothing whose smell is distilled and added to a perfume as an ingredient. And the range of leather smells "in natura" is also rather gigantic. In my search for ingredients that are usually used to create a leather accord, I find mainly juniper (tar oil), birch (tar), musk, styrax, myrtle, labdanum, castoreum and civet. In addition, various synthetics.
I have no idea what was ultimately used for this perfume, but if I had been presented directly with the list of these typical ingredients instead of the leather association, I probably would have just nodded in agreement.

Conclusion after several test runs:
For me, this scent clearly stays more in the resinous corner than the leathery one, with a very nice balance between coolness and warmth. I perceive leather, but keeping up the image actually requires rather cognitive effort. If I want leather that is directly "there," I guess I need something else.
Regardless, Oro 1920 is an absolutely interesting fragrance that has provided me with a lot of entertainment along the way and that I would certainly find appropriate days and moods to wear.

Thanks for reading and thanks to Bejot for the testing opportunity! :)