Parfum d’Empire Cuir Ottoman

Leather in summer. Sounds like the title of a German mountain film or an avant-garde poem from the Weimar Republic. Inevitably, these are the words that come to mind when I think of Parfums d’Empire Cuir Ottoman.

For some reason, here I am reminded of Etat Libre d’Orange Jasmin et Cigarette. It inhabits an olfactory space where delicacy vies with debauchery. While one is a leather scent and the other a tobacco scent, they allow us a casement-view into their twinned identities. And, often, I have found them appealing to the same noses. The genius of Jasmin et Cigarette is the amped-up, fruity jasmine. Bananas and Beaujolais. The genius of Cuir Ottoman is the double-caress of Indian and Egyptian jasmine absolute and cool, powdery orris in its disjointed-yet-instantly-appealing heart. Like Jasmin et Cigarette, Cuir Ottoman eschews the indolic, sweaty-body aspect of jasmine for something pretty but not prettified.

After a while, Cuir Ottoman sticks close to its leather base. It never strays into the bejeweled Orientalist realm but, rather, remains Parisian through and through. For those who would find themselves seduced merely by the name, a caveat: this is not Serge Lutens territory. The Ottoman Empire minus the hair and the ointments and the camel dust. Think of Proust’s “petite bande” on the boardwalk at Balbec transformed into a band of enchanted lederhosen-clad Bavarian youth—Hedi Slimane-thin––beholding the Golden Horn and the minarets of Sultanahmet for the very first time.