Cuir Venenum 03

There is only few fragrances I will never forget and Cuir venenum belongs to this family. It is really very special perfume, completely different than everything I know and also the perfume changing my private point of view to masculine and leather based fragrances. I have to say this was the second niche perfume in my collection and the first one I bought for myself during the very beginning of my discovery of this amazing fragrance world. First of all the CV according to my taste is the richest perfume ever created. It is not sharp but is like a viscous perfume oil, I would say like a glue in its richness that when settles on your skin you feel as something penetrating your skin very deeply. At the beginning you smell extremely rich sweetness of orange flower nectar, yellow and orange as the honey taken directly from the beehive. It completely cover leather note that is present all the time but as the second player. CV didn't loose its power with time but it evolves and change the spectrum - still strong orange flower but now they cower the leather with something that I know from chemistry lab when people work with sulfur. It is not terrible smell of sulfide as in rotten eggs it is dry an a little scrubbing, chemical or mineral smell creating amazing aura that is sexy and very sensual. For sure in the CV is much more going on because fragrance changing its face being more sweet and incense containing or more dry from time to time probably because of animal musk. Summarizing it is very unusual creation done with unbelievable passion and perfection. My all time favorite.

This fragrance immediately reminded me of an extremely specific time and place. The scenario was...Drinking wine at my firends house. When I asked my partner to try this perfume and then I described what I thought, and she said..."Yeah it's totally that....It's incense and cheap candles." The bitchy comment about these particular friends aside, she's kinda right. The opening is a syrupy resin and orange blossom a sweet, messy construction but with a hippy joss stick backbone I'm assuming from myrrh. It's quite linear and not really what I would describe as leathery in the dry down but I recognise this 'leather' accord from other fragrances so I know it's considered acceptable to describe it in those terms. The wine element is interesting, not that it smells of wine but evoked memories of drinking the stuff, thought provoking I guess. I don't like this and I don't want to smell of it, although the drydown is a little bit nicer. I'd give it a miss. Update: It's funny what 12 months and a revisit can yield, I actually really like this fragrance now. The opening is a transparent floral musk, with some sweet element, progressing into a leathery drydown which is absolutely fantastic. It's not a full on leather accord, just a gently leathery spine with some fresher resin notes and a tiny hint of smoke. The floral/leathery nature and hint of honied sweetness reminds me somewhat of immortelle but it's clearly not immortelle if that makes even the tiniest bit of sense? I'm really enjoying this today.

I was eager to try this perfume from the very first moment I heard its name. Cuir Venenum, Cuir Venenum - it sounds like kind of a magic spell or mantra. And so I got to test it at last By the way, it was one of my first niche scent tested. So, it impressed me a lot. There was this kind of leather that I have never smelled before - sweet leather! Freshly processed leather immersed into thick grape juice, very intensive and syrupy - a real sugar poison. There are no major deviations from the main scent line in time of development. Sometimes leather is stronger, sometimes weaker. Sweet notes are very vivid all the time. I understand people who find this perfume weird. I sometimes feel this too, but that means this one is really not an ordinary frag. It stirs you, it balances at the border of one's comfort zone. For now, my relationship with this perfume is somewhere between "love" and "like". I wouldn't mind getting it as a gift, but this definitely wouldn't be my everyday scent. This one stayed for 6 hours on my skin and for much much longer on my clothes. Do not overdose! :)

So when I sprayed this on today, I immediately concluded this had to be the sweetest leather I had come across. Didn't like it or care for it whatsoever. It wasn't all bad and had some nice nuances, for instance a nice smoky side, cigarette-like, but it is doused in thick, honeyed orange blossom and it is kinda seductive that way. However, the first two hours I felt like this was too much of a sugary femme fatale - or a wannabe version of that. Later on, the syrup vibe wore off and it started to warm up a bit, catching my interest. I was surprised to enter that stage. I wouldn't have expected that at all. Now, this is not very special, but it does go against 'niche rules', challenging the wearer with its sticky syrupness and rewarding him or her for their patience once that tones down a little, combining buttery coconut with leather & myrrh. Still on the fence whether I like this, or maybe could love this. Let's see what happens. In any way, the sweetness in this juice is almost provocative and definetely NSFW. Hot date or lover's night material only - in a confident mood.

I found myself with a bottle of this not because it's beautiful, but because I became obsessed with it. Some things are so outrageously and unapologetically whatever they are that they are fascinating. Cuir Venenum is one of those things. It's highly intriguing, almost too sweet and too dirty. Addictive and almost too much, at the limit of outright repulsive and sickening, daring. White flowers have this narcotic funky facet that has been pushed in orange blossom with honey and lemon to the limit of decency to meet that sweaty leather....yes, it's bad. Someone once told me that it smells like a biker beer burp, the other talked about Middle Eastern pastries fermenting and they are not wrong. Cuir Venenum is disturbing, but harmonious. I'm honestly surprised that I was never forced to wash it of.