Les Exclusifs de Chanel Cuir de Russie
The opening is sharp and austere—bergamot cut with something dry and smoky, like the first strike of a match in a cold room.
The scent fingerprint
Weighted by intensity across 7 accords.
Every perfume in Sillage is represented as a distribution across canonical accord slugs — a lingua franca for scent. Two fragrances with overlapping fingerprints are scent-twins, even if they share no literal note.
- Leather50
- Bergamot25
- Tobacco25
- Jasmine20
- Rose20
By the editors · 2 min readThe opening is sharp and austere—bergamot cut with something dry and smoky, like the first strike of a match in a cold room. Within minutes, birch tar emerges, that distinctive note that gives Russian leather its name: burnt, resinous, almost medicinal. The florals don't soften this so much as complicate it. Rose and jasmine appear through the smoke like embroidered silk glimpsed through a fur collar.
As it settles, the leather becomes less aggressive but more pervasive, mellowed by tobacco and a quiet muskiness that keeps everything close to the skin. This is pre-war luxury imagined from a distance—austere, slightly severe, worn by someone who doesn't need to announce themselves. It works best in cold weather and on people comfortable with fragrances that don't flatter in conventional ways.
