Gold Leather
Atelier Cologne (2013)

Starts out very harsh and very loud, a bit too much for me. The scent itself is good and interesting, a spicy dark leather. For the price I'd rather choose Cuir by Molinard - although Gold Leather may feel slightly more refined and less rough. It smells good, especially after it dries down a bit, I'd just choose some other leather for me.

Fruity, dry, bitter, acid, sweet, spicy. Original. It's got everything and is totally unisex.

I could sample Patchouli Ardent from Guerlain some weeks ago and this reminded me of it.

Gold Leather - definatley a worthy night-out scent which gets compliments. This one really breaks away from the house style. More like a TF private blend or middle-eastern inspired montale scent. It did feel a bit like a box ticking exercise: leather-oud / saffron-oud / rose-oud / general booziness - all present by the truckload. This modern type oud aroma-chemical almost works as an airy top-note creating a scented force-field about a metre around the wearer. The opening reminded me a lot of MFKs oud (original), creating a golden haze via the saffron-oud combination. The dry down had a very similar leather to TF TL. And there was a ubiquitous rose-oud. I honestly can't fault the quality, ambition or opulence of the scent. Thing is im just a little jaded by these kind of note combinations. And to have them all in one fragrance was a little too much. And the rose was a bit too floral-feminine when combined with sweet fruit. If I came to this earlier i'd have loved it. Right now I'm ambivalent, although it achieves what it set out to achieve. It will stand its ground beside TF TL, Montales and even MFK it smells like money! - but then, similar themes can be found at Marks and Spencer for a tenth of the cost.

extroverted performance. more is more here. Overall a tricky rating of 72/100 I hope the others in the premium 'metal series' do a little less.

A fruity notes appears briefly full-on in the opening blast - a note of candied mandarins with a touch of mirabelle plums.

A boozy note is added swiftly and overpowers the fruits to some extent. It is the aroma of a somewhat nondescript dark rum that leads into the drydown, where the leather now evolves without further ado. A leather on the brighter and lighter side, soft, quite sweet at times and with only a minimum of underlying smokiness. A leather without any harshness, and certainly without any gasoline element.

The base keeps the leather on board all right, but sees the development of a very pleasant artemisia impression, which is smooth and quite balsamic far a certain stretch of time. This merged with a woodsy undertone that has characteristics of the cedar component here and there. The triad of leather, wood and artemisia see this composition out until the end.

I get moderate sillage, adequate projection and eight hours of longevity on my skin.

This snort for warmer autumn days is all right as a leather fragrance, but the drydown and the base result in being rather pleasant, even with a glimpse or originality. The performance of quite good, and the ingredients are blended well. At the borderline between neutral and positive, so in dubio pro reo: overall - just - a thumbs-up. 3/5.

Incense and not much else for about 8 hours. When it finally calms down it actually turns into a nice warm skin scent of plum schapps, something like turmeric (but soapy clean, not dry and dusty) plus a light leather. Actually very pleasant but no projection by this stage. And earlier on it's too much of an incense-thug for practical use.

Fruity beginning which is very sweet. I also get some dried plums that have been macerating in alcohol and added on top some extra orange peel for freshness. At one point, I pick something mentholated that goes on and off.
The booze is gone and the fruity notes are there, going strong, sweet and juvenile most of the time as they don't have something powerful to balance with, being that the leather is very shy, more like a soft suede; it is clean and it's sitting quietly in the background. The fruits are clearly dominating the blend, but towards the end, woods are joining and it also has some kind of dusty feel to it.