Reviews of Cuir de Russie (1953)
by Creed

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.

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 had to try this because it was created for Errol Flynn and because I love leather. I don't much fancy it though. I don't mind raw, strong leather scents verging on rubber, gasoline and tar, like CdG Synthetics, Lonestar Memories, Cuir Ottoman, Kolnisch Juchten, Knize Ten, Patchouli 24... Cuir de Russie is too "thin" and cold and aggressively metallic/medicinal though. I guess it reminds me mostly of CdG Garage, which is an interesting concept scent but not very wearable, smelling more like gasoline and fake leather car seats than leather.
CdR starts with very cool birch and very sour lemon and perhaps some of the other notes too combining to a sharp mosquito repellant/felt tip pen scent. Underneath that there's some not-quite-leather, more like fake leather. Very butch but not in the ruggedly handsome way, more like a young model with a chiseled jaw staring coldly into the camera dressed in a brand new punkrocker outfit, metal chains and rubber pants all shiny.
Not veyr likable but I probably have to keep it nonetheless for the history.

undoubtedly the 'dirtiest' of the Creed scents, Cuir de Russie is, to my nose, also the most exciting. knowing that Errol Flynn, for whom it was created in 1938, was a big fan of Knize Ten may explain some of its mystery. Like Knize Ten, Cuir de Russie is an uncompromising oily, leathery beast, though all things considered more citrussy, less smoky than Knize. an elderly, knowledgeable sales assistant once commented to me that Cuir de Russie was hollywood and Knize Ten wiemar republic; in other words, where Knize Ten conjures up images of a decadent cabaret in 20s berlin (or even vienna), Cuir de Russie is a fragrance fit for the swashbuckling hero...

very dated, not something a young guy such as myself could wear (im 22). Its very very lemony to start and dries down into a pleasant but cold leather. I could see this really working on an older guy but its not something a young fly gangsta such as myself could work