 |
The Lotion's Bottle Reads "Bottle Made in West Germany" |
I received two of the three English Leather bottles that I purchased on eBay, pictured above, and the outstanding bottle is identical to the one on the right, so I don't expect much enlightenment there, with possibly only a mild difference in scent between them. The bottle on the left, the "All-Purpose Lotion," is apparently the older of the two, and from the scent alone I can tell that. It's a bit weaker but smells like there's an old and likely banned nitro musk in it, although strangely the scent dies pretty fast, so who knows?
Aside from the concentration and aesthetic differences between the two, I can't tell their ages on looks and smell alone. Big, fuzzy first-gen nitro musks were in widespread use during the 1950s, '60s, and even the '70s, so the bottle on the left could be from any of those. It does have "Bottle Made in West Germany" embossed on the bottom, so that's a clue the product is from a much earlier era than any other I've encountered. Strangely though its label is pristine, while the newer 2 ouncer on the right looks more worn and scuffed. So if the lotion is older, it must've been kept in a relatively air-tight and dry spot for decades, away from heat, moisture, and sunlight. Honestly, it looks like it was printed yesterday. It's spotless. I'm impressed.
The cologne is much stronger and basically as I remembered it. The thing about English Leather that most people don't realize is it's the scent of my childhood. English Leather was the one cologne I actually wore as a kid, albeit infrequently. I remember wearing it on more than one occasion to church and to family functions, and we're going back to when I was eight, nine, ten years old. Pre-teen years. Back then I remember this stuff being incredibly dense and powerful, and frankly I disliked it. But my parents encouraged me to wear it, and my dad had his father's 1980s bottles (then brand new) sleeping under the bathroom sink, so English Leather it was. I even remember my mother teaching me how to apply it: a little tiny dab behind each ear, and a couple on the throat, of all places.
My nose has likely been worn down over the years, but perhaps the vintage fragrance has also weakened over time, because the cologne smells less intense than it used to. I could wear this -- lightly wear it -- and not get a headache like I used to. But that makes aging these bottles difficult. I'm confident the cologne is from the late '70s or early '80s, before MEM did their 75th aesthetic change-up on the labels and caps that my father's bore. My guess on the lotion is it's from the late 1960s or early '70s. Legend has it English Leather was originally produced in Europe and named Russian Leather, and MEM operated out of Germany. It's entirely possible my lotion is a "missing link" bottle of English Leather, a rarely-seen 1950s vintage, somewhat "deep vintage," if you will.
But I still think there's a "dark vintage" element to English Leather, bottles that are entirely missing from the conversation because nobody has ever actually seen them. I view English Leather as being more important to the pantheon of masculine perfumery than even Ivory Tower fragrance writers like Luca Turin and Chandler Burr believe it to be. I trace the lineage of this type of citrus chypre through to things like Tabaróme Millésime, Dirty English, and Bleu de Chanel. Those fragrances wouldn't exist if it weren't for English Leather's unique burled woody-citrus scent. But another factor is the anonymity of English Leather's perfumer, which ChatGPT credits merely to a midcentury "oil house." One might view it, by the AI's description, as something MEM took extra profits from by essentially marketing a premade base as a finished fragrance, while also selling it to third parties for use in more complex compositions.
That's how English Leather smells to me -- more like a base than a truly finished scent. It has a dense muskiness to it that feels like it's all about the base, or "bass," Meghan Trainor style. There's a lick of bitter citrus in the top, but it mellows and pervades through to the far drydown, feeling more fixed and foundational than like an extra layer. Beyond the citrus there's a woody sweetness that feels like a clear call-in on whatever musk is used, and the woodiness is very flat and one-dimensional. There isn't much of a leather note, but one might smell something of saddle soap in MEM's formula. I have a much newer bottle of this stuff that I reviewed many years ago, a massive bottle that has darkened over time, and that version, despite all the crap it took in the forums at the time, smells even more like the stuff I wore as a kid than these vintage bottles do. Brighter, heavier, soapier.
I'll continue to play with these in the days ahead, and will look into the lotion. ChatGPT puts the lotion in the late 1960s to early 1970s, and the cologne in the late 1970s and early 1980s, just like I did before I even asked it. It suggests that the rounded wooden cap of the lotion was more the style of the late 1960s vintages, while the darker and more cylindrical style was what MEM was putting out a decade later. Both predate the 1990s and the reunification of Germany. So, really not telling me much there, as that much was obvious to me. The question still lingers in my mind . . . what did a 1950s bottle look like? Does anyone out there own one? Has anyone out there even seen one?
Anything that predates 1963?