I don’t like leather and don’t like gourmands, but I can get behind this leather gourmand if we want to call it that. It’s Dzing! by L’Artisan Parfumeur. It picks up the benzoin where Candy left off and takes the sweets to the circus.
When you first spray it, you definitely get a blast of the barnyard and cotton candy mixed together, maybe you’re at a kid’s birthday party at the petting zoo. The barnyard smell is thanks to castoreum but also hay which brings a sweetness. There’s a bit of a skanky musk, a waxiness, and powdery sweet benzoin. Instead of leather paired with florals, this is leather paired with something yummier and it just works but it’s not for everyone.
It definitely smells dirty and sweet, but when I wear it I’m the topper on a cake, observing (and smelling) chaos without letting it bother me.
If I’m talking about leathers I like, I go from Dzing! to Cuir de Russie.
While Dzing! is dirty, Cuir de Russie is clean, the leather there thanks to birch tar, a mix of soapy florals, jasmine and rose, but also a bit of ylang ylang. Dzing! is whimsical and playful, Cuir de Russie is buttoned-up and formal.Where Dzing! uses the element of surprise, Cuir de Russie gives you what you would expect from Chanel. Refined elegant outdoorsiness.
When you’re parents are around, you revert to being a kid, so I’m choosing to be 24 which is how old I was when I got this bottle of Narciso Rodriguez. I smelled it at an airport duty free and couldn’t stop thinking about it, so I got it. This is the perfume that launched many flankers, and the mix of rose and musk is now classic. It’s impressive what the perfumers, Christine Nagel and Francis Kurkdjian, have accomplished since, but also impressive that this smells grown up and accessible at once, classic but also modern. In a way, it reminds me of Glossier You, but maybe Glossier You’s cool, older aunt who works as a lawyer now but before that sold homemade soaps or something. I guess there’s a floral musk-heavy perfume for every generation.
