English Leather was initially called "Russian Leather" as the story goes, and was launched sometime in the 1930's alongside a glut of other similarly-named scents, but when the Danish company MEM jumped shores to the US and relaunched it's scent globally from there, they found it wiser to re-name it "English Leather" for it's 1949 relaunch to prevent Americans avoiding the stuff due to cold war paranoia associated to anything calling itself Russian. I honestly think it was a good move in the long run, since even after the cold war ended, there really aren't very many scents calling themselves "English Leather", but there are simply tons going by the name "Russian Leather" or "Cuir de Russie" if using the French. English Leather, much like the earlier Old Spice (1937) and later Brut (1963), would also become so undeniably popular (and thus common), that like the aforementioned, sort of became a victim of it's own economy of scale after a point, gradually getting reformulated to oblivion in the name of profit margins long before IFRA ever made any imposed changes. English Leather was just as good a leather masculine as any in it's heyday, and remained in pretty stable condition until Renaissance/New Dana picked up the property from a failing MEM corp and proceeded to re-orchestrate it as they did Canoe (1936) from the old Dana portfolio they also acquired. From there on out, English Leather became every bit the Walmart-quality scent most know it to be now, and only got worse after IFRA restricted the oakmoss in it's base. This review is based off of 80's MEM (towards the end of their existence), but I've also owned various Dana iterations throughout the years and have smelled the newest, so they'll be touched upon a little further down. Suffice it to say older is better here, but as long as you don't buy stock any newer than early 2000's, you'll at least get to experience the true leather chypre it's supposed to be. Anything after 2011 for this stuff is pure tragedy however, but more on that later.
English Leather in it's original form is another strange example of both chypre and fougère thought processes merging into one. MEM and Dana have always called it a chypre, and it does mostly smell like a chypre to be honest, so we'll keep it at that. Lemon, bergamot, and orange meet with very pale lavender in the top, and the stuff already sets us up for the classic rigidly masculine dryness that most other aromatic citrus chypres in the late 40's through the 50's possessed. Rosemary floats into the picture alongside some iris in the middle, but the base comes on pretty fast afterward. Some sites list a honey note being in the middle but I can't for the life of me sense it. The base is oakmoss, cedar, vetiver, the tell-tale leather note, tonka, and a tiny puff of musk. The leather and cedar give this it's bite throughout, and the oakmoss alongside the vetiver in the vintage give it the thrumming staying power it's known for having. Overall English Leather in all MEM iterations stays bright, a tiny bit soapy (but nothing like an aromatic fougère per se), then gets a tad darker in the end with the vetiver, moss, and tonka, but never gets sweet with that tonka or musk due to the cedar counterbalance. No aldehydes or heavy florals in this leather scent, which may make it seem a tad crude next to other leathers past and future like Knize Ten (1924) or Aramis (1965), but considering this was made to be an affordable signature for the working man, I don't think the unknown nose behind it really was trying for sophistication. The original tag line for this was "Wear English Leather or Wear Nothing at All" so I can see this was just meant to be "the cologne" and not some kind of major artistic statement. It smells as it sounds, of a saddle-quality leather, with the bright opening and dry finish keeping it squarely in a no-nonsense leathery mode throughout the wear. It isn't the best, but it's easy to see why it was popular. Unfortunately, this is where all the praise ends for the original, affable, simple, but effective "everyday leather" scent for men, because once it became a dynasty, things slowly went downhill.
MEM had made a mint on English Leather by the 70's, and had greatly abused the name for an ever-expanding waistline of flankers, much like Shulton did with Old Spice around the same time. I won't bother listing all the various flavors English Leather came in, but there was over a half-dozen of them and they had the same effect of making English Leather seem like a brand unto itself rather than a standalone iconic fragrance, which I feel hurt it in the end. By the 80's English Leather was becoming quickly irrelevant, and so was MEM, which lead to it's acquisition. The first "New Dana" iterations of English Leather were fairly close to the original stuff, just a little brighter with heavier top notes and dwindled base notes, likely for frugality. The first major re-orchestration in mid-2000's made English Leather very powdery and shrill, reducing the base further and removing the soap, giving it that "nursing home talcum" quality that younger people associate with the stuff, damaging it's reputation with potential new buyers. I think the oakmoss was also quietly replaced with generic "tree moss" at the time too. All bets were off after 2011 however, with "Dana Classic Fragrances" as they were calling themselves at this point thinking that they could just substitute a proper mossy chypre base with a super musky and synthetic one from their recent English Leather Black (2007). This last change majorly shifted the scent from chypre back into fougère territory by not only restoring the slightly darker, soapier edge of the original, but by making it dominate, having the base almost entirely musk and coumarin alongside the cedar and vetiver. The top remains mostly unchanged but the end result is a version of English Leather that goes on similarly, but dries down all wrong, smelling like weird leather variety of Axe body spray. There's plenty of vintage left to ensure a proper English Leather experience, but don't expect it to knock you socks off in any form, and being a fan of dry mid-century men's chypres is still a prerequisite to fully enjoying this. In a nutshell, English Leather is a decent "when all else fails" casual/work leather scent, but only in vintage form.