Rose & Cuir Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle 2019

Actually, the rose is quite well represented in the catalog of the Edition de Parfums: ‘Une Rose’, a full, juicy rose soliflore; ‘Portrait of a Lady’, a rose carried by patchouli and incense; and - although not a rose, the scent of geranium is closely related to it - ‘Geranium pour Monsieur’, the rosy-minty freshness for men.

Now comes ‘Rose & Cuir’, a fragrance that marks the return of Jean-Claude Ellena to the circle of perfumers around Frédéric Malle. ‘Angélique sous la Pluie’, ‘L’Eau d’Hiver’, and the two Bigarade fragrances are credited to him, and ‘Rose & Cuir’ fits seamlessly into that lineup: a typical Ellena, through and through.
As with ‘Cologne Bigarde’ or ‘Bigarade Concentrée’, he manages to let his central note shine so brightly, only lightly accented by fresh, green, and subtle light-woody notes, that one doesn't want to stop sniffing at the scented skin area.
The rose here (actually not a rose, but again rose geranium, as in ‘Geranium pour Monsieur’) smells so natural - as if you were holding your head directly in a bouquet of blooming pelargoniums.
Wow, that’s great, I love the scent of geranium!

But, and this must unfortunately be said: the fragrance offers very little more. Those who think that the leather, the supposed second protagonist of this fragrance, has a significant role to play will unfortunately be disappointed. Leather nuances are present, yes, they become more pronounced as the fragrance develops, but ultimately they play hardly a larger role than the finely nuanced traces of vetiver and cedar.

Frédéric Malle writes: “...vetiver and cedar forms an earthy bed of dark, mysterious leather with IsoButyl Quinoline at the center - an intensely bitter molecule, largely forgotten since its use in the daring perfumery of the Jazz Age.”

With IsoButyl Quinoline, Germaine Cellier enriched her legendary ‘Bandit’, and in her fragrance, you can still experience it today in all its bitter-leathery facets - but in ‘Rose & Cuir’? Well, okay, it’s there, and towards the very end of the fragrance development, I can actually smell it quite clearly. But for the first three to four hours, I kept asking myself: where is the ‘Cuir’?

I think one must not make the mistake - and I probably made it - of assuming overtly pronounced, all-pervading leather notes like in ‘Knize Ten’ or its reinterpretation, Marc-Antoine Barrois’ ‘B683’. ‘Rose & Cuir’ simply does not present them, as it is too committed to the blooming freshness of the geranium.

Another fragrance that came to mind when I read that Malle was launching a scent with such a name was the good old ‘Van Cleef & Arpels pour Homme’. Here too, a strong rose surrounded by rich leather notes - but in what x-fold potency!
Well, I should have known: Jean-Claude Ellena is, and seems to remain, a master of sublimation. Under his hands, everything becomes much finer, airier, and more transparent, without losing presence.
So here too: the rose, or rather the geranium, is far from the rich heaviness of the rose in Fléchier’s ‘Une Rose’, just as the leather only hints at the intensity of the leathery base of Bandit/VC&ApH.

One probably has to go back to an old fragrance by Jean-Claude Ellena to find a comparably constructed and composed scent: ‘Rose Poivrée’ for The Different Company. Here too, a wonderfully naturally fresh rose accord, characterized by slightly peppery nuances, but above all by a few hefty drops of civet secret. Later, the civet components were significantly reduced, roughly to the extent that the leather occupies today in ‘Rose & Cuir’.

So far, so good. One should know that ‘Rose & Cuir’ is a typical Ellena fragrance. The last fragrance I acquired from the Editions de Parfums was ‘Music for a while’: also a scent that relies on two protagonists - lavender and pineapple - but staged so lush and rich that it leaves one breathless.

No, ‘Rose & Cuir’ is certainly not such a caliber. Instead, it is a wonderfully radiant, rosy geranium scent, with a finely sublimated leathery base, well suited for both men and women, and blessed with really good longevity and pleasant projection - that it is!