Cuir de Russie (1953)
by Creed

This begins with a very fine old fashioned lemon note, evolves into a birch-tarry light but present leather and ends with a fine ambergris note. Some nice Sandalwood too.

Not a pretty fragrance but an excellent one. It states "masculine" strong and clear without the need to be confrontational.

A well-deployed lemon accord married to a smokey woodlike scent. To me leather suggests the smell of saddles, wallets, rawhide, new shoes, belts. I don't detect any of that. Think of lemons that have been placed on green branches that are then placed on a grill. Similar in effect to the Vintage Tabarome, though without the heavy sweetness. Fresh and wintry. Makes me think of horse-drawn carriages in the Russian countryside, in the snow. There is an astringency but the lemon balances it so the scent remains balanced, no excessive sweetness or harshness. Not at all like the modern Creeds starting with GIT since the animalic note of ambergris or civet is absent. Wears close to the skin. Would be a nice surprise for anyone snuggling up to the wearer. The bad news is that Creed is pulling the frag. It will be reissued once or twice a decade. The good news is that Chanel Cuir de Russie is nearly identical, only lighter.

This is by far one of THE weakest and worst leather fragrances i've ever tried. There is MINIMAL to no leather in this.....another falsely named Creed scent. This smells cheap and nasty to my nose....with no real development, sillage, longetivity or anything! I'm struggling to figure out what the point of this scent is......oh wait, i've figured it out----so people can pay $175 for a bottle that says "Cuir" and "Creed" on it...but doesn't accomplish the "cuir" part of the equation.

The opening provides an intense blast of birch tar and leather tempered with lemon. I find it to be intensely masculine, but it a rugged way, nothing sexual here. The intensity lasts for roughly 30 minutes. I enjoy this part. It would be easy (and incorrect in my case) to say it is gone after 30 minutes. What lingers for hours is a dull impression of what I smell in the opening. So it doesn’t develop, but is rather anticlimactic, and therefore relatively disappointing.

Cuir de Russie starts out drier and more astringent than its sibling Royal English Leather, with a dominant birch tar component. It quickly grows smoky on the skin, and even suggests some iodine, as in an Islay single malt whisky. It doesn't bring to mind beef jerky or a barbecue like Andy Tauer's Lonestar Memories, nor is it fruity and sweetened like Daim Blond or Armani Prive Cuir Amethyste. I understand other reviewers' references to gasoline, medicine, and asphalt, I but I actually like Cuir de Russie's harsh, smoky take on leather. In fact, it seems to me quite modern, in the mold of Bvlgari Black or Santa Maria Novella's Nostalgia.

What disappoints me about Cuir de Russie is that it peters out very quickly, running through its smoky leather and sandalwood drydown within just a couple of hours. Otherwise a very well-made and appealing fragrance for fans of birch tar-dominated leather.

Leather, leather, and leather with a little citrus—true, the leather is smooth and rustically enjoyable, but I don’t think that it’s enough. I find Cuir de Russe missing dimension and the whole fragrance seems to be absent of complexity. Its leather note might not earn the label “boring,” but only in the sense of my not being brutally honest. I find the sandalwood used in an almost excellent way—almost, because it is the right note in the right place, but it needs to be more hefty to accomplish its balancing act with the overbearing leather note. The sandalwood would add a beautiful depth to leather if it were stronger, but as it is, it’s a tiny voice crying in a leathern desert. The ambergris is quite diminutive to my nose, and that, too, is not a good thing in this case. A person has to really love leather to love this one.