Published on January 28, 2025
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There’s a reason they call this time of year “leather weather.”
While the natural material is indispensable for beating the chill in fall and winter, it also has a uniquely seasonal scent. In the same way that green fragrances dominate spring and fresh bottles rule summer, the best leather colognes for men feel appropriately warm and welcoming in Q3 and Q4.
But unlike other warming fragrance notes, such as woods and spices, the smell of leather isn’t distilled out of the raw substance—at least, not anymore. Instead, modern perfumers use a variety of natural and synthetic ingredients to achieve a leather-y bouquet, including tobacco, birch, styrax (Google “Japanese snowball”), and even animal notes. That means that for every fragrance that lists leather as an ingredient, there’s a different interpretation of the material’s distinctive qualities.
We think of the scents below (some new, some classic), as the ultimate ways to enhance the experience of slipping on a leather jacket, lacing up a great pair of boots, or even pulling on a pair of gloves. Read on to find the perfect fit for your cold-weather rotation.
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Perfumer H Saddle
Perfumer Lyn Harris is known for crafting elegant and nuanced fragrances that romanticize the smell of whatever she’s named it after. (When you have a chance, seek out samples of Ink and Rain Cloud to get a sense for what we’re talking about.) With Saddle, she channels the slightly animalic scent of the equestrian’s essential accessory, blending bergamot, orange flower, benzoin, and patchouli for an alluring, all-day ride.
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Molton Brown Dark Leather
This bold, smoky scent uses crisp lavender, spicy elemi, and pine to evoke the sensation of walking in the woods in winter—gloves pulled on, boots trudging through snow and fallen foliage. In other words, exactly what you want to be wearing if fate means you have to be in an office when desire would lead you to the mountain instead.
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Todd Snyder x D.S. & Durga Young Dunes
Few menswear designers are as good at collaborations as Todd Snyder—something he made abundantly clear in his first scent with D.S. & Durga. The fragrance combines a long-lasting suede base note with the smell of dune grass, verbena, and iris to capture a beach day in Q4.
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Byredo Bibliotheque
Though it has a lot of fruit and floral notes, Bibliotheque is centered on the scent of leather-bound books—hence the name—and transports you to the kind of library you actually want to spend some time in.
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Chanel Antaeus EDT
Image Credit: Chanel This undersung and uncommonly long-lasting eau de toilette has been earning guys compliments since it was introduced in 1981. Elegant and unerringly masculine, it blends sage, thyme, oak moss, rose, and patchouli to evoke the unflagging spirit of the mythical Greek giant it’s named after. And it works. After all, it’s been available for 43 years, and it’s still getting rave reviews.
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Matiere Premiere Falcon Leather EDP
Image Credit: Neiman Marcus Though its name sounds like a rejected joke from an Anchorman writing session, Falcon Leather is a very, very good fragrance. It’s supposed to smell like the kind of glove you’d wear to protect your hands from the talons of its titular bird, but in practice, it gives you rich, sticky notes of saffron, birch, amber, and tobacco. It’s a sexy and somewhat more gentlemanly answer to Tom Ford’s Tuscan Leather—and it’s begging to be worn the next time you have to put on a tuxedo.
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Tom Ford Eau de Ombre Leather EDP
Image Credit: Tom Ford Speaking of Mr. Ford. The brand that bears the designer’s name scored points among fragrance lovers when it introduced Eau d’Ombré Leather, an upgraded take on Ombré Leather, earlier this year. The new iteration is milder than its older brother, and opens with a comforting hit of ginger before drying down into a gentler vanilla and amber expression.
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Ex Nihilo Chandigarh Express EDP
Image Credit: Ex Nihilo Named after India’s utopian midcentury administrative capital, Chandigarh Express is a complex concoction of spices and flowers the nation is known for, with an international supporting cast that brings a variety of nuances to life. Its blend of cardamom, davana, patchouli, and jasmine enhances a rich leather accord; together, they achieve impressive longevity and a sillage that’ll have people running after you to ask what you’re wearing. It’s warm, bright, and punchy all at once—exactly what you want to wear on a very cold day.
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Perfumehead Room No.
Image Credit: Bergdorf Goodman We’ve long been fans of Perfumehead, the brand that devises olfactory love letters to Los Angeles that evoke poetic—and specific—senses of place. Room No., one of its standouts, was intended to smell like 9 p.m. at the Chateau Marmont. (We told you it was specific.) In practice, that means a blend of bergamot, palo santo, black tea, all of which help add warmth to a a buttery leather accord.
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Arquiste Aleksandr
Image Credit: Arquiste Another perfume house with highly specific imagery? Arquiste. Its Aleksandr fragrance, which has been on the market since 2012, imagines the smell on the final morning of writer Aleksander Pushkin’s life, which ended in a duel in January 1837. It blends the scent of his leather boots and gloves with the ozonic elements you’d encounter in St. Petersburg at that time of year: fir balsam, birch, and oakmoss. It has a wintery freshness that works splendidly in spring and fall.
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Memo Paris African Leather
Image Credit: Memo Paris Memo Paris’s Cuir Nomades line casts the material as the ultimate tool for the globetrotter and imagines how your fine trunks, shoes, or bags might smell after stints in various global destinations. African Leather is, arguably, the best of these (although there are versions for France, Ireland, India, and other locations, too). The scent offers oud and warm spices with just a hint of cola, with an array of flowers that balance the bitterness of its leather expression.
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Dior Fahrenheit
Image Credit: Dior This bold, masculine scent blends violet leaf, Sicilian mandarin, and a leather accord that reminds some of gasoline. But that quality dances surprisingly well with an array of other notes, including sandalwood, cedar, lily of the valley, and tonka bean. People have loved its green, leathery aroma since 1988, and there’s no chance that’ll change anytime soon.
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Floris Leather Oud
Image Credit: Floris If ever there was a gentlemanly leather scent, this is it. Floris, the English house beloved by James Bond creator Ian Fleming, adds a throwback quality to all of its products. For Leather Oud, that means imagining a time when fragrance components—say, oud oil—were delivered to perfumers in jars wrapped in newly tanned leather. The material’s scent is a standout here, evenly matched with a smoky oud expression, a hint of geranium, and a comforting base of amber and vetiver.
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Frederic Malle Rose & Cuir
Image Credit: Frederic Malle Flower petals and leather might seem like an odd combination, but this scent blends them together beautifully. The standout element in Rose & Cuir is, well, roses—so you do have to like them if you’re going to buy in here. But the formula also includes pepper, cedar, vetiver, and blackcurrants for a surprising sense of freshness.
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Astier de Villatte Tucson
Image Credit: Aedes The first time I smelled Tucson (on Robb Report‘s incredibly tasteful digital watch editor, Allen Farmelo), I fell in love. It’s an attempt to capture the scent of the well-known city in Arizona, and tries to get the smell of everything from strawflowers and cactuses to sun-baked red earth into one bottle. But where it sings is with accents of birch and labdanum, which help create a leathery effect. Close your eyes and you can almost imagine John Wayne walking by.
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