Christian Dior Cuir Cannage: Cozy Living Inside a Bag

by: Serguey Borisov

”Open a leather bag, plunge into the depths of a lived-in leather and unearth its secrets.” Are you ready for the Christian Dior offer of a new Cuir Cannage La Collection Privée. Bagonauts, take new scout aboard!

So here's a bottle, the perfect cylinder in the white tube, created at the time of Hedi Slimane. Now it has found a second life in La Collection Privée (formerly Christian Dior Couturier et Parfumeur Collection). The first press of the spray is enough, the second is not necessary. Cuir Cannage is a fragrance with a strong personality, surprising by its out-of-time feeling. My immersion into Dior leather handbag became a trip into the history of leather perfumes. Anyone who loves the leather scent family and manages to try every perfume with leather in it, will learn immediately where Cuir Cannage has grown from and on whose shoulders it stands.


Everyone who has ever tried the legendary Russian perfume Novaya Zarya Krasnaya Moskva (Red Moscow) can recognize the general direction of perfume, its slightly spicy floral-orris heart, soft and warm oriental drydown—that of the “Empress Beloved Bouquet” perfume created by August Michel for Brocard House devoted to the 300th anniversary of the Romanov House in 1913. (OK, in case you have never tried this legendary perfume, please, recall Guerlain L'Heure Bleue as a flowery ancestor of Cuir Cannage). The Cuir Cannage difference is that the floral-spicy beginning is contrasted by a tar chord, born in fire: black Birch tar and heavy cade oil is produced by pyrolysis of Birch bark and twigs of juniper, respectively.

Floral bouquets may vary, but many leather fragrances bring the overall impression of a bouquet of flowers gradually melting into the thick smoke and tar.

The first that comes to the mind is Knize Ten (1924), a sharp and multifaced floral-leather perfume, and its soft modern incarnation Knize Ten Golden Edition (2000). 
Christian Dior in-house perfumer François Demachy, author of Cuir Cannage, has already created a floral-leather fragrance for Emanuel Ungaro. At first it was a designer's personal fragrance (according to unconfirmed reports) and after some time, this floral-leather perfume with a clear civet drydown was released in 1993 as a limited edition. The red box and flacon of Ungaro L'Ombre de la Nuit resembled a crypt with a figure resembling an alien mummy.

A little later, in 1996, in a series of leather fragrances called Centaures by Pierre Cardin appeared a Centaure Cuir Etalon, a flowery leather perfume with a slight herbal- peach accent. (That was a great leather series, leather perfumes in all different bases, from amber to fougère herbs, in bottles with a colored horse head stoppers. Pierre Cardin can be considered as a forerunner of a now emerging trend.)


Then Serge Lutens Cuir Mauresque (1996), Fleur de Peau by Keiko Mecheri (2002),Maitre Parfumeur et Gantier Cuir Fetiche (2011), Ramon Monegal Mon Cuir (2011) followed—the contrast between flowers of life and tars of death works fine in perfumery. (Translated into oriental language, rose against oud can be the luxurious phenomenon of the same order.) 
I deliberately stand Chanel Cuir de Russie outside the brackets for this listing—it seems to me that Ernest Beau managed to move the focus from the tar on the iris in the perfume, so Chanel Cuir de Russie is less pungent, more clean and graceful.

Cuir Cannage starts with daring and spicy ylang-ylang accord, chilled with damp iris. And at this stage one could realize where all the iris has gone from the original Dior Homme. Here it is, in Cuir Cannage.

Then the Flower Waltz enters, and bright orange blossom and jaunty jasmine make rose whirl in the ballroom to the indolic dizziness. The smelling salts with the scent of violets do not help rose to be clear. Weak violet cannot sober up, just a little powder to powder a nose. During this twirling dance the candles in the ballroom are gradually extinguished. “The city goes to sleep, and the mafia awakens”—hot spices and dense balsamic shades crawls to hunting in the dark. Birch tar and Cade oil are impossible to miss, but the floral notes, especially indolic jasmine with cloves, try hard to make the smoke more sweet and hot, and then woody notes of cedar and the buzz of coumarin pull the drydown further. The aroma has no clear explicit gender notes like girlish vanilla sweetness or dry macho moss—so it's good example of a multigender perfume.

Anyway, whether an old-fashioned or classic fragrance lives in Lady Dior handbags depends, I think, on your attitude towards the brand Christian Dior and the classic “old-time perfumes” like the “Red Moscow,” or L'Heure Bleue. In my opinion, the scent is a high-quality modern interpretation of the classic theme. And it shows, in general, that the IFRA restrictions on some perfume ingredients do not prohibit François Demachy (and other perfumers) from creating very good perfumes ...

I want to mention specially the pervasive and omnipresent touch of LVMH marketing, which starts with the fragrance name. The Cannage visual image is the DNA-treasury image of Christian Dior like the “houndstooth,” the pearl-gray color or the bows.

Appearing as a rattan weaving pattern on the seats of Napoleon III-era chairs, it consists of the two warp and weft threads that become the fabric women wear, with two more crossed threads on the diagonal to complete the motif. These threads are cane, which is to say strands of rattan.

The cannage weave was the literal basis of some of the Second Empire’s finest moments in décor: it was used for chair seats. When the couturier was deliberating the décor for his haute couture salons, he called on decorator Victor Grandpierre. Together, they came up with a neutral, refined setting that would put the focus on the clothes themselves. They also chose gilded concert chairs with woven cane seats, Napoleon III-style chairs that have never left the house since. In 1953, Christian Dior began to experiment with these rattan motifs. The first fragrance with a braided Cannage pattern on the packaging was Christian's own fragrance—Eau Fraiche. Now the pattern has decorated not only the expensive leather Lady Dior handbag, released in 1994, but also the relatively inexpensive eye shadow palettes released 20 years later with fragrance Cuir Cannage (though there's no pattern on the perfume bottle and packaging). By this, you can feel the touch of the magnificent history paying different prices: from 50 euros to several thousand euros. Add that Cannage pattern present on the cologne bottles of Dior Cruise collection (like Escale Aux Marquises), on lipstick Rouge Dior Baume, on baby shoes, on My Dior golden rings and bracelets, on the Dior Dior sunglasses, and even on the white poplin bibs for babies—the cannage motif is the very spirit of the house, a Christian Dior DNA element, a common thread that runs from creation to creation. In memory of Monsieur Dior.

Cuir Cannage Christian Dior

Notes: Fleur d'orange, Rose, Jasmine, Violet, Iris, Ylang-ylang, Tobacco, Birch tar, Cade oil.