This is a very peculiar Jo Malone, and is really different from the rest of the line. Even more different than Pomegranate Noir, as it not only combines notes that are very unusual and not often used in perfumes, but also notes that don’t really go very well together… This starts off kind of aromatic and green (must be the agava), but you can smell the cacao bitter-sweetness in the background. For some reason, this smells like a toilet duck to me. I usually try to stay away from such associations to describe scents, but this is what this reminds me of, in a peculiar, perfumey kind of way. Thankfully, it’s a well done toilet duck and it actually smells pleasant in its own odd way. The dry down smells to me almost exactly like Coty’s Musk Vanilla. Very nice. But we all know of the price difference between the two… And Musk Vanilla not having the toilet duck scent and also costing a fraction of Blue Agava and Cacao – I think the bottom line can be left out as it’s so obvious.

Blue Agava & Cacao also stands out (in a negative way, I am afraid) because of its lack of balance. The other Jo Malone scents, even if theoretically sweet (such as Vintage Gardenia) or gourmand (Black Vetyver Café) do have something else to balance that sweetness, and so the final result fits in well with the “Cologne” concept of the line: simplicity, freshness, elegance. Blue Agava and Cacao seems as an artificial installation in this clean gallery of odours. It may please many, but it doesn’t seem like a “real” Jo Malone.

To me it smells like "Jo Malone meets Tom Ford", an event that might have taken place in the Estee Lauder boardroom.

It does get better though, when layered with other Jo Malone classics, such as the Grapefruit Cologne or the Amber & Lavender Cologne.

As a side note, Agava just sounds plain horrible in my native language, so I may not be all that objective after all. It sounds very similar to both the name for syphilis and tomato… Ouch!

While Tabac Blond is a rebel, with an elegant off-beat premise – Cuir de Russie is an unusual take on luxury and chic.

While the animalic notes in Tabac Blond are abstract and allude to leather bound books and horse-takcs, and set the mood of a desired loneliness, in Cuir de Russie these are present to make a statement of uncompromised luxury and decadent style.

Cuir de Russie, more than other leather scents that I met, really makes me re-think the relationships between luxury, wilderness, death and perfume. The animal essences here are so strongly present, that you can’t help but think of the forests in Russia where wild animals’ lives has been taken away for the sake of their skins and furs. I cannot wear Cuir de Russie without thinking about a fur coat and a furry Russian hat. Maybe it’s because my mind is set on these clichés. Maybe it is because the first time I smelled Cuir de Russie was in one of the most luxurious spaces – the Chanel boutique. Perhaps it’s really the scent doing this, as reeks of luxury quite blatantly.

Wearing Cuir de Russie is like wearing a fur coat. Which is a big statement. It’s going all the way for appearance. It’s telling the world that you are willing to kill for your looks. That you don’t really care about wild life. But it’s also a reminder that once upon a time, before we learned how to make textile and fabricate our clothes, we had to burrow other animal’s skins and furs to survive the cold long winters. In those far-away days, where fur was a question of life-and-death.

When I wear Cuir de Russie, I think of a snow-covered forest in Siberia, where a hunter is just recovering the hunted animal, breathlessly giving away its winter coat which is soon to be traded for rye bread, sausages, vodka, and other Russian necessities of life.

Chanel’s Cuir de Russie reeks of animal essences – primarily castoreum absolute, an essence extracted from the Russian – and Canadian – beavers, after they have been hunted for their furs. There is also civet galore. It’s amazing how furry this perfume is thanks to those essences. But there are other notes as well, and these are what make Cuir de Russie such a masterpiece:
It opens with notes of cade and a resinous, dark myrrh. Than, leathery cassie notes fleet around, like a misty cloud of foggy vapour – airy, powdery, barely visible. Soon enough, we move into a phase of an airy white floral bouquet – jasmine sambac being the most visible of all. Roses undfold later and the perfume turns into a smooth bouquet of notes that are not quite separable from one another, but harmonize to create an overall creamy, smooth leatherness. There are sweet resins and balsams (namely benzoin and labdanum), a subtle, sexy musk, and a most definite note of castoreum paired with civet. Hours later, I smell a familiar oakmoss dry down, but it is very subdued.

*Image of a Woman in a Fur Coat by Nick DeWolf dated December 8th 1970, courtesy of dboo
**I chose this picture because it is elegant, yet it seems the woman really needs the warmth of the coat...

Leather perfumes have so much character, that it’s hard to believe I am having hard time writing about them. Perhaps they have too much personality? Maybe it is because they can all be summed up in one word: Leather. They are not all the same, but they all boil down to some kind of leather – suede, fur, horse saddles and tacks, and so on. Strangely, I find myself associating leather perfumes with things rather than people or emotions. Mind you, very pleasant things, such as old books and libraries, horse saddles, shoes and shoe stores. All things that I don’t really associate with a particular emotional state or memory for the most part, just a simple pleasure of serene rainy afternoon reading an old book or near quiet horses at the stable. So perhaps leather perfumes are the scent of serenity for me, where no complex emotions are involved – just enjoying things, aka objects?

Tabac Blond is the first leather perfume I wanted to write about. It is so original, and as it has been launched as early as 1919, it preceded most of the leather perfumes that followed in the 20th century. First whiff of Tabac Blond immediately reminded me of my old German dictionary that I found in one of my old school’s library giveaways (apparently, nobody read dictionaries at my school except for me). It had the most gorgeous gothic letters throughout, not just the cover, but also inside. I thought that having it in my private library was the most fantastic thing which would make me feel very sophisticated and worldy, not to mention help to enhance my German needed to expressively sing the romantic Lieder by Schubert and Schuman.

That was my first impression of Tabac Blond, and this is how it smells straight from the flacon. Wearing Tabac Blond is a different story altogether though. It unfolds with its rich notes, and every time I discover something different in it. The rich dark and dense notes unfurl and uncurl, open up their dark buds of smudge and resin. They do so slowly and without any attempt to compete with one another.

Tabac blond opens with the notes of old leather bound books in a monastery’s library. It’s dim-lit, and full of studying monks and dark brown robes (perhaps they are Franciscans?). The structure gives away the age, but the building is well preserved – the rocks as well as the burnished wood. As satisfying a note as this may be, it is enriched with other dark notes – starting with the rich, sweet-spicy floral eugenol of carnations, which to me, reeks of luxury. When the carnation wears off a tad, I can sense the sweet clean woody scent of vetiver, and a sweet floral note that could be the ylang ylang, but to me smells more of rose and jasmine, very subdued. The florals are there just to smooth rough corners, as there is nothing really floral about Tabac Blond. The base is a rich, balsamic, resinous mélange of patchouli, vanilla, ambery labdanum, and musk. A base that develops into something that is somewhat reminiscent of Shalimar’s dry down on my own skin…

The notes, based on the Perfume Addicts Database, are:

Top notes: Leather (achieved by castoreum absolute, in my opinion), Linden, Carnatnion
Heart notes: Iris, Vetiver, Ylang Ylang
Base notes: Cedar, Patchouli, Vanilla, Amber, Musk

As you can see, there is no tobacco here. Not in the listing and none that I can detect with my own nose. Like Narcisse Noir, the name is mostly fantasy. And so is the perfume itself!
The reference to tobacco is more likely to have more to do with the twist of history, than with tobacco itself: right after World War I, when women started to smoke more openly in public, amongst other signs of emancipation. I can't smell the linden either, but I won't be surprised to find it there one day, when least expected. And Tabac Blond is indeed an unusual scent for a woman in its time, one that would wear pants, smoke in public, wear her hair short, and insist on having a political opinion strong enough to cast a vote. So it is not surprising that nowadays it is worn and admired by men and women alike.
Image credits: