Love conquers all
It is difficult to write about Rose and Cuir without considering its nose and the history that comes before it. Its very name is suggestive of Jean-Claude Ellena’s Hermessences, a line for Hermès that epitomizes the minimalist style he is best known for, a number of which were named after two contrasting ingredients, "Vetiver Tonka," "Epice Marine," and so on. However, if Rose and Cuir’s name and short ingredients list have left you hoping for another light-wearing and pared-down “olfactory haiku,” it will surprize.
Rose and Cuir is a forceful fragrance. It opens with a bright, fresh rose briefly rounded out with berries and then heightened by pepper. After about fifteen minutes or so, the IsoButyl Quinoline kicks in. If you are unfamiliar with the note, think of the fantastically bitter and smoky opening of Bandit. This eventually dominates the scent. For a couple hours following, Rose and Cuir remains a harsh leather wherein the rose and other notes like vetiver all play a supporting role. On one wearing, the aggressive gasoline tinge of the leather became so commanding, the rose was barely discernible, and yet it still provided a major tempering influence to the leather’s brusqueness. It’s like the cinnamon in your chili. You’d never guess it was there but you’d immediately notice if it was forgotten.
The scent slowly shifts its emphasis in the dry down. By the third hour, it is perceptibly a rose geranium and berry infused leather. And it is very much rose _geranium_. By the fifth hour, the floral note has come to the fore as the leather recedes to serve as a smoky foundation.
It’s a ballsy move to present a harsh note like IsoButyl Quinoline in such a pared down perfume. Take Bandit, which has a lot going on, adding creamy tuberose, animalistic musks and a symphonic host of other notes as a counterweight. It’s an elabourate costume, the whole nine yards of SM leather: the cage harness, the overbust corset, the skin tight pants, the lace up thigh high boots. If Rose and Cuir is a domme like Bandit, she’s waxed every inch of her body and is wearing naught but a pair of Louboutin So Kate stilettos. While tapping the ashes of her cigarette onto your tongue.
If you can set aside your expectations of watercolour transparency that typifies Ellena’s previous fragrances, you will find the simplicity and dynamism of the Hermessences is still evident with Rose and Cuir. Here, Ellena has paired two contrasting notes and let them play off each other. Rose is luminous and uplifting, guileless and sanguine; Cuir is sharp with shadows, dangerous and brooding. But if this is a haiku, it is not one of serene, zen-like contemplation, but of stark, noire-ish drama.
Personally, I adore the bitterness of IsoButyl Quinoline but I’m a maximalist at heart and I already have Bandit. Rose and Cuir will probably prove to be too challenging to rank among Malle’s more commercially successful perfumes but I am so glad it exists. Bravo!