Royal English Leather de Creed (1780)

Not the most creative or interesting leather around and definitely unworthy its prices, especially now that it’s discontinued (sorry, “vaulted”), but I can’t really argue Royal English Leather’s quality. It smells good. Almost great, if you’re into classic, waxy, dark, austere “shoe polish-infused” tanning leather scents. True rich and faceted rusty leather, forget today’s stupidly flat and artificial Tuscan Leather-ish stuff. Just think of Knize Ten: Royal is definitely close to it, just adding a whiff of flowers, a very pleasant touch of ambery mandarine giving some “air”, colour and sparkling sweetness to the heaviness of leather, and in the most recent bottles, also Creed’s trademark base of metallic-dusty ambroxan. I had the chance of getting an older bottle of this, and that base accord was definitely not there – it was quite more all about leather and oily shoe-polish like notes (also darker, drier and spicier, overall slightly heavier too).

That’s it: no tremendous twists during its evolution – actually, almost no evolution at all, nothing particularly standing out. But it smells good, very good. It’s rich, distinguished, totally – somehow, slightly pedantically – elegant and austere, with the perfect balance of complexity and simplicity: it’s nearly only waxy, brownish, lived-in leather - done extremely well, with a subtle sort of ambery-floral-mandarine aura giving a perfect hint of bright sweetness, and yet it doesn’t smell boring or simplistic. Not even dated, actually; somehow it does have a “vintage” feel (think of Knize Ten again), and yet its texture feels crisp, clear, without the old-school thickness one may expect from this type of scent. Quintessentially British in fact: unexcitingly impeccable!