MEM Company / M. E. Mayer
The house behind English Leather.
MEM Company, operating under the name M. E. Mayer, is an American fragrance house with roots stretching back to 1883. The company built its reputation on accessible masculine grooming scents and made its most lasting mark with English Leather, launched in 1949 — a classic barbershop-style fragrance that became one of the best-selling American men's colognes of the twentieth century. For decades English Leather defined a certain image of rugged, unpretentious American masculinity, competing in the same cultural space as Old Spice. MEM also produced Kosmetika, Ambre Chinois, and Members Only cologne. By the 1990s the brand's fortunes had faded alongside the classic men's grooming category, and Dana acquired the English Leather line in 1996. MEM represents a vital chapter in the history of mass-market American fragrance.
DNA over time
Each column is an era. Each colored band shows that family’s share of accord weight across every perfume the house released in that window. Bigger band = the house leaned harder on that family.
