Cuir Garamante (2013)
by MDCI

Roses in the dustbowl. The curious interaction of the smoky, dusty, pepper-infused cypriol with quite juicy roses is a bit of a headscratcher but, hey, I’ll settle for it as it seems to have some purpose. That purpose being a seriously rich and spicy rose perfume (the cuir of the name is a bit player really – just a touch of dirt around the edges), complete with Montale-like oud as support. So far so satisfying, but why anyone would part with serious bucks for this remains the question when so many more affordable niche lines are also doing this kind of thing to say nothing of the Arabic cheapies that got there first. Good for its angularity and drama – less good for its rather polite way of expressing them.

Parfums MDCI Cuir Garamante is a sophisticated, sweet, woody fragrance involving leather but not dominated by it.

I don't get many of the top notes (pink pepper, saffron, nutmeg) at all, really, as this starts out a pretty sweet leather for me for me with vanilla and rose in the mix. I cannot liken it to a leather/vanilla/rose intersection I've encountered elsewhere except perhaps in Dua Fragrances Hypnotic Santalum, which has amber in place of the vanilla that's in Cuir Garamonte.

Performance is decent, but definitely not as strong as Invasion Barbare, which provided a bit of a tease for the brand as Ambre Topkapi was so-so.

As with other Parfums MDCI offerings, the price is a bit difficult to swallow, at $250 for 75ml for juice alone and $375 when including the resin bust top that is so iconic for the brand. I give this high marks for the scent but not for performance or price.

8 out of 10

Form the beginning a generic leathery crisp peppery impression greets me. It has a fairly clear harshness to it, with the nutmeg quite evident. The saffron is more vague on my skin, and has a somewhat flat and woolly character.

Further into the drydown all of that harsh leathery note remains as generic and nonspecifically synthetic as it gets: characteristics of many a synthetic patchouli, musk or pseudo-oud flow together in the artificial laboratory creation.

The base softens is a bit, with generic woodsy and vanilla notes ringing in the end of this olfactory line.

I get moderate sillage, good projection and seven hours of longevity.

Not bad, well blended and nice in autumn, but too generic to make a true mark. 2.5/5.

This fragrance is so aquiline and beautiful. I think it needs to be worn by a woman. On a man it might get too dark or dusty . It has a unique balance between a warm and an icy impact. Cutting but cozy .

This sits somewhere between an aldehydic rose and an eastern-inspired saffron and sandalwood affair. It’s plenty competent, but it’s a road so well travelled that there’s little that can be said about it. The aldehydes are what you’d expect — fizzy, rosy, a little bitter. The saffron is indivisible from the synthy sandalwood; it’s hard to tell where one stops and the other begins. There’s very, very little in the way of leather — so little, in fact, that I google-translated “garamante” to see if it meant “hardly any.” (It doesn’t; it means “city” or “sacred people.”) I mean, everything is in proportion and it’s perfectly pleasant, but smelling it feels like checking boxes for the genre. Furthermore, it really doesn’t smell that far removed from Arabic cheapies which can be had for around $15. If Cuir Garamante had been released a decade ago, I would have been more forgiving, but for a 2013 release it offers nothing new. A serviceable, but blindingly unoriginal rose/oud/saffron/ebanol cocktail that’s not worth the money when you can get very similar scents for much less.