Cuir de Russie (1953)
by Creed

This review is under revision.

This begins with a very fine old fashioned lemon note, evolves into a birch-tarry light but present leather and ends with the finest ambergris note I know.

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

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.

I find the birch note to be absolutely stunning here. I agree that it is unusually paired with the citrus and prone to derision. I am unaware of it being used like this in any other (masculine) fragrance. To some this is the odd, rubber/gasoline accord. Although I can detect this for a short time, it is not a detriment. I find that to be an integral part of its bold character--and it's not created synthetically. CdR is unique among all of the Creeds and other brands. It is not soft, clean or well behaved. It is dynamic, sweeping and not for everyone. The ambergris base tends to fade more rapidly below 50 degrees F / 10 C and above 90 F / 32 C. It is not the most tenacious composition but that is not an issue for such a blast of the country life.