Cuir Velours
Naomi Goodsir (2012)

The last several reviews are spot on, there's not much I can add.

This has a type of leather sweetness that gets to your stomach. It's not sickly sweet as in a foody gourmand, but in the way that some leathers can 'get down your throat. Maybe a drier, cooler climate would help curb this, but keep this away from humid heat for sure.

When I think of sueded leather, I think of Bottega Vaneta Pour Homme, and I would reach for that every single time over CV. I'd say that if this is your bag, performance is much better than BVPH, though they are not similar scents.

5/10

Revisiting Naomi Goodsir now that her ‘flavour of the month' moment in perfume fora has long passed feels a bit strange. The Goodsir perfumes I tried then all had their flashes of interest, but failed to attract me enough to part with cash for a bottle. Cuir Velours was the one that I was least drawn to because leathers that hold me beyond a couple of hours are few and far between.
It's a solidly made thing – perhaps a bit too solidly made, for it cannot help but remind one of some gentlemen's warhorses of the 1980s, with the exception of the hulky, smoky backing, which is very much of our own time.
At first the combined impression of the main players here – leather, sweet but meaty immortelle, cured tobacco and booze –was, oddly enough, that of a ‘pine' perfume. And once that had lodged, the notes kept separating and then recombining in my perception to suggest this: pine needles and sap but in a concentrated, somewhat honeyed mode.
I'm all for dry green, almost herbal interpretations of leather but here it comes at the expense of definition – some have referred to suede and new leather but neither of those are apparent to my nose, this Cuir remains in the background.
For all the ambition of the Goodsir line, I can't help but think that here we have ended up with something that is a bit too reminiscent of tobacco and pine ‘man colognes' of days gone by, but now with added smoke.

Somehow, I had high hopes for Cuir Velours. I love fruit-suede fragrances like Visa and Daim Blonde, and am slowly coming around to the idea of Traversee du Bosphore.

Indeed, there is something in the fruity, syrupy heart of Cuir Velours that reminds me of the cherry-pomegranate-apple syrup in Traversee du Bosphore, and also something of that pink-grey powdered suede with a thick dusting of icing sugar on top. To say that Cuir Velours has something of a lokum feel to it would perhaps be going too far. But there's a familial connection, and it's interesting to me.

Maybe 75% of Cuir Velours is attractive to me – in particular that hushed, plushy suede and spiced fruit compote note. The immortelle is nicely folded in, and I can only pick up that strange, savory syrup note in the heart of the fragrance, where it adds a necessary point of interest.

But two things throw Cuir Velours way off track – the overwhelming sweetness and the burnt-woods aromachemical lurking underneath, which is most definitely Norlimbanol. Believe me, I know my enemy well. And it is he. To me, it sticks out like a sore thumb and I don't understand why a perfumer would think it necessary to use such a brutal material in what is essentially a plush-toy sort of fragrance. Another Naomi Goodsir fragrance written off for the sake of one element that just doesn't work for me.

animalic leather with very good staying power and sillage!

Cuir Velours suffers from the same malady as its sibling, Bois d'Ascèse. The problem isn't the fragrance, it's the strategy.

So let's get the perfume out of the way. It's a waxy, fruity leather. Less soapy than Serge Lutens Daim Blond, more spiced than Robert Piguet's revived Visa. A pretty fruit/leather that smokes and drinks. Very nice, truth be told.

But, why? Is niche perfumery strictly about branding. Say you sell a luxury fashion commodity. Shoes, purses, phone cases. Hats. Must a line of perfumes be part of the business plan? The smugness of viewing niche perfumery as a merely a style to be taken up and dropped is certainly nothing new, but the niche version seems dismissive by design. I know that there need to be business opportunities for up and coming perfumers, but is niche perfumery the lapdog of fashion businesses?

The thought that niche perfumery will serve to accessorize fashion is disheartening. Taking the focus away from exploration and placing it on the production of perfumes ‘in the style' of niche is exactly how the soul is sold.

Niche orthodoxy. It will be the death of us.

from scenthurdle.com

Cuir Velours, for me, is the weakest scent in the Naomi Goodsir line. It's a floralized, sweet leather with an herbal presence that seems to be a cardamom / saffron combination. The problem with this scent is that the leather note is ill-defined – flat and surprisingly vague. Furthermore, the scent is very sweet – probably at least two notches beyond what most would deem appropriate for this style. The sweetness is caramel, and it does compliment the more floral and herbal components, but end result doesn't add up to much. Over time the sweetness increases, and it reminds me a little bit of Cuir Amethyst – although perhaps not quite as sweet as that one. And then it all becomes a scratchy, norlimabanol-driven cardboard suede. I think that the ultimate nail in the coffin of this one, though, is simply that there are so many better versions of leather available than this one. If you want a leather where the leather's turned down, and gourmand and savory facets are turned up, then it's worth a sniff. For me, it holds little appeal, and it's especially mediocre in relation to the jaw-droopingly good Bois d'Ascese and even the less-good-but-still-good Or du Serail.