Cuiron Helmut Lang 2014

**Intro:**
You enter a room where only a sideboard stands. Your gaze is immediately captured by its clarity, its simple yet profound elegance, and its perfected functional beauty. A Bauhaus sideboard made of untreated teak wood. You let this image sink in and realize that you become completely calm, nothing distracts you. At the same time, you miss nothing. This sideboard stands there and has an effect. It fills the space….
After a while, however, you do wish for at least a chair or a lamp to go with it ;)

This fragrance is like such a sideboard. Minimalistic, but precisely because of that, it has an impact. Concentrated, yet spacious and simultaneously captivating without being overwhelming. It is present and offers its beauty, clarity, and elegance, but does not pander. If not, then not. If yes, then you are stylishly, discreetly, and naturally accompanied. However, I miss an additional nuance in the long run that would lighten the fragrance or make it more complex.

**Fragrance Development:**
Cuiron opens very briefly with a hesperidic character, featuring a blend of fresh-bitter citrus notes and a rounded, mandarin-like note. This is a fresh, interesting, and fine opening that almost completely disappears after about half a minute, making way for a dry spice-wood mixture (pepper-wood), which, along with the remnants of the hesperidic nuance and a slightly tart sweetness (cinnamon), briefly reminds me of the fascinating note in Jil Sanders Man Pure. Unfortunately, this beginning does not last long, and the fragrance quickly becomes quite one-dimensional, although it is fine and of high quality. As it develops further, a very subtle, fine, and permeable wild leather note gradually joins in, which is then underlaid with a similarly very restrained resinous-bitter nuance, giving the fragrance a dry warmth and intimacy, but it cannot add any additional tension. The dry wood-spice note remains dominant.
The overall impression at the end is fine-woody-dry with a slight wild leather touch, neither hard nor soft, neither light nor dark, and it appears timeless, noble, puristic, naturally elegant, pleasantly restrained, and somewhat humorless, yet without being overly strict.

**Longevity and Sillage:**
On my skin, the fragrance is perceptible for about 4-5 hours, which is acceptable for an EdC. I assume it is an EdC, at least the original was classified as such. The projection is solid in the first hour and then quickly retreats to skin level.

**Bottle:**
I really like the simplicity of both the glass and the print, which correlates with the character of the fragrance as well as with Helmut Lang's fashion under his aegis*.

**Conclusion:**
Cuiron is a clear, Bauhaus-inspired wood-leather fragrance with an incredibly beautiful, complex-fine opening that develops into a rather one-dimensional, but very high-quality, translucent dry wood-wild leather scent. Well-groomed, elegant, understated, without frills, intimate, concentrated. Only the rather weak longevity slightly dampens the impression. Wearable through its understatement all year round. For me, it is a purely masculine fragrance. Just like the Eau de Cologne from the same house, it has rightly been reissued.

**Background Info:**
I wrote in more detail about Helmut Lang's biography in my previous comment on the Eau de Cologne.
This fragrance was originally the last of only five Helmut Lang fragrances released. It was launched in 2002 under the name "Cuiron pour Homme" as an EdC and was discontinued in 2005 after Helmut Lang voluntarily left his company. Due to pressure from his fans, it was reissued in 2014. The ingredients largely match those of the original fragrance, which is why the fragrance character is said to be similar. This can also be read in the previous comments.
This fragrance was created by the French perfumer Francoise Caron, who was also responsible for the design of the original. She is known, for example, for creating one of my favorite fragrances, the "Eau de Cologne" by Hermes, the predecessor of "Eau d'Orange Verte." That was also the reason I had Cuiron on my watchlist.

*The current collection running under the name Helmut Lang has, in principle, nothing to do with the fundamental idea of purism and minimalism of Lang's fashion until 2005.