Cuir de Russie

Russia Leather

Chanel 1927 Parfum

I purchased this as I loved the Edp and it is a beauty in it's own right but there are differences. The extrait is drier, more smoky, less floral and is more unisex. It also smells more vivid like you are smelling something in high definition.

In the first hour as it melds with your skin chemistry you can smell the most gorgeous vivid dry jasmine note. I have to it to say it's more prominent in the extrait than the Edp. Then slowly the buttery Ylang Ylang with the touch of Iris makes it's presence known. It's low key at first where in the Edp it just dominates everything.

As time passes there is a interplay between the jasmine and the buttery Ylang Ylang with the touch of Iris. Until the jasmine fades more and this starts to take over. At this point the aldehydes come into play in quite a big way. It gives the composition a sparkling champagne like feel.

As we get closer to the basenotes the scent starts to become leathery, not suede and clean like the Edp but more of a dirty leather. But it is quite discreet and never overwhelms the scent as a whole.

As the fragrance is a pure parfum oil it does stay very close to you. Within I say half a arms length but it does have a distinct presence and is long lasting. But very subtle!

All in all a very beautiful scent best for special/intimate occasions or for when you want to be self indulgent.

I love this. Both the edt and the parfum. I have both and they are of course quite different. But to my surprise my partner likes the edt and he dislikes the parfum. I have tried to work out why. The parfum has a more smoky expression, supposedly from the vetiver combined with the leather. In the edt there is no leather note (a bit fun, since it is named Russian Leather), and there is no sage or cedar.
But ouch!
That hurt. Knowing that something I love to wear does not please his nose.
I find the perfume amazing. It is soft, round, spicy, woody… so deep! So huge! First time I wore it, I kept sniffing my arm, totally amazed by the way it kept changing and developing. It is a scent I would wear in bed. Every perfume lover should try this at least once.
343/365

Cuir de Russie might possibly be one of the most evocative fragrances I've tried. And I think I might have just discovered *my* Chanel. Made even better by the fact that I have attempted a handful of the most renowned leather fragrances, and dislike modern leather or suede accords every single time. I concluded that I simply dislike leather, except for vintage leather (Shalimar EDC is gorgeous). I still believe this to be true, but this is an even better presentation of leather and vintage animalic notes. My bottle of parfum is quite old, and the animalic notes are natural, not synthetics. Nothing is listed as such, and yet...the aroma from this bottle is so unmistakably castoreum or civet heavy (or both), it's strikingly reminiscent of fur coats (plural, as in, a heap of coats together).

The utter richness of the basenotes springs into the nostrils without prelude, partially owing to the fact that the topnotes here are mostly shot. There are still crisp aldehydes but the florals are so blended and aged, it's just one massive warm floral accord. The quality most apparent is not any flower in particular, but rather the melancholic warmth of them.

This fragrance sings of winter, when no flowers are available save for dried, distilled or those preserved in oil. They're not fresh, they've long since died, but they continue to emit a beautiful aroma nonetheless.

The fur accords (animalics of whatever sort) and leather feel intensely warm, and decidedly high quality. Vintage furs against a backdrop of winter and snow. Absolutely night time. It feels like the Wardrobe opening up into Narnian winter, and I am Lucy in an oversized, blessedly warm fur coat. Some dusting powder from an elegant lady who previous wore it clings to the lapel, along with the smell of aged cedarwood from where it hung.

It's quite frankly, delightful to indulge in something so politically incorrect. Leather, old furs...potpurri florals, dusty unregulated makeup, imported vanilla...it's a DIRTY fragrance in the most exquisite way. Yet, it's comforting and strikes memory neurons I didn't realize I had. It's evocative of deep winter, but reassuring that one will endure it and find beauty within the stillness.

At some point I will hopefully purchase a bottle of this new. Of course, it won't be as rich and textured as this old one...but neither is the world now anyway, and I'll make peace with that when the time comes.

With a crash, she slammed the door shut and waited with the hint of a smile for the suppressed twitch of his shoulders. As every day, he sat with his back to her in the same spot in the dining hall of the sanatorium. She had lost count of how many weeks it had taken for him to finally muster the courage to look her way. She stealthily pulled off the iris-blue leather gloves from her delicate fingers with their roughly cut nails and exchanged a conspiratorial glance with his table neighbor on her side, who always stuttered at the mention of her name.
It was hard for her to interpret the obvious tension in his posture as soon as she entered the room. Did it perhaps express blatant rejection? But why then had he and the doctor discussed in detail the shade of the ylang-creamy skin with a slight rosy tone in the dreadful portrait that the doctor had created with great passion and no talent over endless sessions? And why couldn’t she shake the thought from her mind since overhearing their conversation that this petit bourgeois at the table would have produced a better likeness if only he could finally free himself from his oppressive small-mindedness.
She sighed, rolling her eyes, and sank back into a slightly hunched posture. The guessing game and the illness were taking their toll on her. She coughed discreetly into a silk handkerchief embroidered with tropical fruits while concentrating on the sound of her slightly snow-soaked leather boots on the light birch wood floor, and felt his gaze penetrate the delicate scarf of jasmine-white gauze at her neck before she caught him out of the corner of her eye for a fraction of a second.

**

Unlike Clawdia Chauchat, the Russian with the French name from Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain," Chanel's Cuir de Russie is a Frenchwoman with a Russian name, but this strange opposite reflection is not the only thing that connects the fragrance with Mann's character. Just like Madame Chauchat, Cuir de Russie enters the room with a door slam from the signature Chanel aldehydes, bergamot, and whispering yet distinctly smoky birch tar, beneath which soon emerges the well-known floral triad of jasmine, rose, and ylang-ylang that links so many Chanel fragrances. However, the lush flowers here are darker and more indolic than usual. At the heart of the fragrance beats an iris heart that gently pulsates, building a bridge between the flowers and the dark-animalic, birch-tar-tanned leather, softening it, almost buttery, and so delicate that one could almost forget the underlying brooding darkness of the scent. In the base, the flowers then dissolve into soft leather, the gentlest smoke, fine tobacco notes, and voluptuous amber.
Thus, Cuir de Russie’s path leads from the slightly cool French elegance of a picture-book Chanel fragrance through the brittle sensuality of the classic olfactory Russian leather idea to this unique and precious leather accord that I simply cannot get enough of. This harmoniously connected contradiction of flowers and leather, of light and dark, cold and warm, West and East embodies in my perception the masculine duality of femme fragile and femme fatale, represented by Clawdia Chauchat, and the artist-bourgeois problem of Hans Castorp. This is especially true in that the latter has obviously decided to die as slowly as Cuir de Russie’s flowers in the dark leather under the feline gaze of his Baudelairean beauty.

Just like Chanel's Cuir de Russie, Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain" was published in 1924 - and who knows what lay on Ernest Beaux's nightstand when Coco Chanel commissioned him to translate her affair with Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich Romanov, a cousin of the last Russian Tsar, into a perfume.

Dear Trollo, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for allowing me to experience the original from the 1920s! It is an incomparable treasure, and I guard every drop like my own eye.

When I look at some of the recent creations, like the current Black Opium by Yves Saint Laurent, I can only say that Paris is on the brink of the abyss and the era of the "Great Fragrances" is over. However, when I smell the Extrait of Cuir de Russie, I know that there is still true French perfumery art, which will obviously soon only be found in boutiques. The classic original Opium never really suited my taste, but it was a good fragrance in terms of composition and scent progression. Black, on the other hand, is nothing at all. But now to Cuir de Russie.

It is certainly true that today's Cuir de Russie is no longer the original from 1927. I can imagine that the first one from the then Russia, which probably contained much more birch tar and tobacco, would not be as wearable for me, and that today's version has been somewhat modernized. What I believe is that this pyramid corresponds to the current one, but the fragrance components have been altered in concentration/weighting, and we have long known that an Eau de Toilette is always a bit lighter and different than an Extrait. Therefore, I find terms like Eau de Klo somewhat inappropriate. I do not know the one from 1927, but the Extrait of today overwhelms me. However, the EdT is also very important to me. I perceive the floral accord in the lighter version more strongly, while in the Extrait the vanilla and leather notes are more richly developed. Since one does not travel with an Extrait, I use the EdT for lavish re-spraying on the go, and both are very important to me.

Cuir de Russie, regardless of the concentration, is a very elegant and distinctive fragrance. The smoky leather and tobacco notes, although subtly presented, are not typically feminine, but also not overly masculine; I find it very well decided to classify the scent as a women's perfume. Of course, it can also be worn by men, but for me, it leans more towards a femininity of a special and distinctive kind of elegance. On women's skin, I think the floral bouquet contained within it comes to the fore more strongly, while on men's skin, the smoky tobacco nuances may dominate.

To all lovers of Cuir de Russie EdT from 2007, I can only recommend treating yourself to the Extrait and having both. In my opinion, this above pyramid is still the same regarding the main fragrance notes that Chanel reveals as fragrance characteristics.