Hey there Olfactoria’s Travelers,

Portia from Australian Perfume Junkies and Perfume Posse here and thrilled to be spending some time with you all.

Today I am looking at a fragrance from one of the most interesting and enigmatic of the Independent Perfumers. Christopher Brosius is controversial, seemingly just by being who he is, it doesn’t feel forced or like he is constantly trying to court controversy but even down to his choice of business name I find him and his fragrant aesthetic wonderfully interesting and thought provoking.

I thought the box so fabulous that I had to at least picture it here. More than 40 15ml Parfums. $10,500. There’s my budget gone for anything else this year, and I’d be eating Ramen noodles 6 days a week. I don’t wish for it myself but I am glad that I live in a world where such a thing is possible.

Old Leather: Premium Accord. I think some of you are wondering why Old Leather, others are like Premium Accord? Yep, don’t worry. It’s not as hard as it looks. An accord is a set of fragrant ingredients put together to create a smell unlike any of themselves on their own. So you could have 20 ingredients that are put together in such a way that they smell quite a bit like fresh cut lilies, or another of 13 ingredients that smell like buttered popcorn etc etc. These accords are then mixed together to make another fragrance, just in DIOR’s J’Adore the base has four named* accords: Blackcurrent, Cedar, Musk, Vanilla.

Old Leather then is an accord that Christopher Brosius uses in his fragrances but that he also thinks has its own intrinsic value as a stand alone perfume. Why is it a Premium Accord? Because they have been created, the 10 most popular of his accords, at a double concentration into Premium Perfume Absolute, Water Perfume and 2 ML Travel/Trial Premium Absolute, which is expensive and fiddly to do and so they are Premium. It’s pretty exciting and I feel like I’m at the fragrant coal face here. To be honest I think Christopher Brosius is cool.

Photo Stolen CB I Hate Perfumes

So what do you do with a Premium Accord? Well, you can wear it alone as your SOTD (Scent Of The Day) sprayed/dabbed on skin or clothes, you can mix and match any of the 10 in the set or if you love your Shalimar but wish it was more leathery then you can amp up your leatheriness with a spritz of Old Leather. I would spray/swipe in a second area of my body or clothes though so the fragrances can waft into a blend rather that causing chemical reactions on your person.

How does it smell? I have a decant of the Water Perfume and I find it soft and gentle, yes leather but the leather of a Chesterfield couch or a handbag store. Yes it’s leather but it’s finished leather and that slightly plastic smell of refined finishes. This is not the tack room of a horse stud, nor is it newly from the tanners and dyers. The couch has been in use, perhaps in a hotel lobby so it’s picked up some of the day to day scents of humanity, the bag is still in its first season of use but it is a favourite day to day use carry all. As the scent gets into its heart it gets more bitter and there’s some darkness/herbal/humus scent creeping in under the expensive leather, like it has ended up in a jungle. Then it calms right back down and takes about 3-5 hours to leave my ability to smell it.

Photo Stolen Wikipedia

CB I Hate Perfume has Old Leather from $12/2ml parfum sample
Surrender To Chance has Old Leather Water Perfume currently for only $3/ml

Have you tried any of the CB I Hate Perfume Premium Accords? What were your impressions?

Portia x

*Quite often for brevity, or sheer bloody-mindedness, they will only give out the featured accords or make some rubbish accords up or in fact get every damned thing wrong and leave us all flailing….. You get my drift?