CUIR GARAMANTE

An addictive perfume, as bestial as sophisticated. From the first notes images of lost tribes of the deserts pop up, of happy Arabia, of the Horn of Africa. Images of caravans loaded with spices and precious resins. Manly fragrances of tanned leathers combining heady scents of rose fragrances.

Cuir Garamante is MDCI's first leather fragrance—a style with roots that can be traced back to the early days of perfumery. While leather fragrances (that is, fragrances that attempt to recreate the aroma of leather objects) have been around for centuries, Cuir Garamante belongs to a fairly new subset of the genre: the richly-adorned, incense-laden leather compositions of the aughts which owe as much to woody oriental style fragrances as they do to the leather fragrances of the early twentieth century. Cuir Garamante opens with a boozy spiciness and a woody rose accord that shortly gives way to a central leather note. The leather is accented by a variety of supporting players including sandalwood, papyrus, cistus labdanum and vanilla, oscillating between smoky and sweet flourishes.