Zip Codes and Milliliters: Another Old Bottle of English Leather, But Still Not Old Enough . . .

In a recent post on Badger & Blade, I asked if anyone had come across English Leather bottles that predate the 1960s. After some friendly back and forth with a couple of members, I came up empty. One member, however, clarified something useful: older bottles are more likely to list their size in ounces only, not milliliters. That detail led me to consider Shulton's Old Spice. After 1967, Shulton began listing both ounces and milliliters on their bottles. It's reasonable to assume MEM followed suit around the same time—though it's unclear whether MEM did it first or copied Shulton.

The other day, I received the third English Leather bottle I’ve bought off eBay. It’s another 2-ounce cologne, nearly identical to a previous one, but with minor differences. The text is smaller, there’s no dividing line between the fragrance name and its concentration, and the colors are slightly darker. Most notably, the size is listed only in ounces. That suggests it predates 1967. But it also has a ZIP code on the label, and ZIP codes were first introduced in 1963. So it was made sometime after that year. This puts the bottle’s age between 1963 and 1967. Old, but not old enough. And that’s what baffles me.

The lotion I have also falls into that same post-1963, pre-1967 window. All my bottles are, at most, 62 years old. But I’m looking for one that’s 76. There’s a 14-year gap in English Leather’s early history. Where are the bottles from that period? Every example I’ve seen online includes a ZIP code, so none predate 1963. That’s remarkable.

Even more curious is the inconsistency in how the cologne smells. The post-1967 50 ml bottle I featured in my last article smelled flatter and less citrusy, less dimensional. That didn’t surprise me. But the older bottle pictured here? It’s crisp, bright, fruity. The citrus sings. The mossy base feels balanced. What’s going on?

I’m starting to wonder: is English Leather the first mass-market fragrance to fake its release date, and get away with it? Everything points to MEM fabricating the 1949 launch year. But why? What would they gain by lying about it? Or maybe MEM never mentioned a launch year? Maybe someone else just randomly invented 1949, made the claim to the public, and it stuck for no good reason?

To be clear, I’m not searching for a bottle that might predate 1963. I’m looking for one that definitely does. No ZIP code. No milliliters. Just "English Leather Cologne," the size in ounces, and maybe a short New Jersey address, if any.

My English Leather Investigation Continues . . .

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?

Where Are All The 'Deep Vintage' Bottles of MEM English Leather?

A 1963 print ad, the oldest I could find.

One of the many things that plague the fragrance house of Creed is the argument that "deep vintage" bottles that predate the 1970s don't exist, despite Olivier and Erwin's claims to the contrary. Indeed, an internet search fails to yield imagery of anything particularly antiquated, beyond perhaps a few very early iterations of the contemporary flask bottles, all of which read "Olivier Creed." This of course exposes them to constant criticism. 

As I've argued in the past, Creed has a built-in excuse for this problem that, to me at least, actually washes: their pre-seventies output was primarily bespoke. If you're only in the market for individualized orders, there will be no examples of those products for the public to see, not unless any of Creed's clients offer them up. If I'm a multi-millionaire who hires the Creed company to make me a bespoke cologne, and I pay $100,000 for a 17 ounce flacon (with a bonus refresh flacon), the outside world won't see those bottles. They'll never see what I privately commissioned for myself, because, well, it's private. 

Very few people seem to accept this logic, however. So, Creed continues to get hammered on the issue, and likely always will be. But strangely enough, the benefit of the doubt is very readily given to another fragrance that sneakily claims to have a wizened lineage that also is not supported by any available sources, at least not online. The fragrance in question is English Leather by MEM/Dana. MEM had cited English Leather's release date as 1949, with tales of it originally being launched as "Russian Leather" sometime in 1930s Germany, then discontinued, then relaunched after WWII, again as Russian Leather and again in Germany, before being renamed "English Leather" and marketed to Americans throughout the 1950s and 1960s. 

If you look on Basenotes, Parfumo, and Fragrantica, they all cite 1949 as English Leather's release date. This is curious, because 1949 is a long time ago, but not that long ago. There should be an abundance of print ads dating back to the 1950s available online, much as there were for Old Spice, which predates it by nine years. Yet when I search for those print ads, nothing comes up. The oldest ad I can find online dates back to 1963. And, also quite curiously, there is no record of MEM Company, Inc. ever existing on 347 Fifth Avenue. It's like the fragrance and the company behind it were legacy inventions for 1960s consumers, and that invented legacy continued to transition along unchallenged through the subsequent five decades, all the way up to today.

Today, I'm challenging it. Where are all the "deep vintage" bottles of MEM English Leather? A search online yields results that again only date back to the early 1960s. I've purchased the oldest vintage "all-purpose lotion" bottle I could find on eBay, with a label marked "MEM Company Inc., Northvale, NJ" and a bottle marked "Bottle made in West Germany for MEM." The product is clearly from the early or middle 1960s, and it's even possibly a little newer given its pristine like-new condition and blond wood cap. One thing I do know -- it's definitely not a 1950s bottle. I can't find one of those, nor can I find an ad for one.

Neither can Chat GPT, for that matter. I asked the A.I. to utilize its research mode and find me links to documents that prove English Leather predates the 1960s. After conducting an exhaustive scouring of the internet that took just under an hour to complete, it admitted to me that it couldn't find any evidence of English Leather ever predating 1963. There are zero documents, zero patents, zero bottles, zero print ads, and zero photographs to back up the claim that English Leather was released in 1949. Not one single spec of information to support the claim that MEM produced English Leather as "Russian Leather" in the 1930s. No documented proof that MEM ever marketed English Leather to anyone other than postwar Americans. No proof that MEM manufactured English Leather prior to the 1960s. I've scoured eBay for "deep vintage" bottles, and 95% of the deepest deep vintage bottles available are from the 1980s. 

I also purchased the bottle pictured below, after searching "1950s Vintage English Leather," and finding this among only a few bottles. The fancy metallic leafing on the label's border and lettering suggests to this commercial design major that it's an early 1980s bottle of cologne. 

And this is the other bottle I purchased, a late 1960s to mid 1970s vintage:

As with Creeds, the only thing consistent about MEM's production and packaging of English Leather are its inconsistencies. From year to year there are wildly varying graphic designs for the labels and types of wood caps used. No two bottles look alike. Bottles from the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s are all very difficult to match, and neither of the bottles shown in this article resemble the 1980s vintage bottles I used growing up. But all bottles have one thing in common -- they all say "English Leather." Where are those first-issue "Russian Leather" bottles? 

What does this dearth of documentation mean for English Leather? Hard to say for certain. It's possible that there are simply no surviving bottles or print ads for deep vintage 1950s English Leather. No surviving "first issue" bottles from 1949. No "dark vintage" bottles of the original prewar release. ("Dark Vintage," by the way, is my term for fragrance vintages that are exceedingly rare, borderline extinct, or possibly never seen.) These bottles simply were used up and thrown out, and nobody has access to them anymore. The print ads? Lost to the annals of time. The documentation of MEM Company's residency on Fifth Avenue in NY City? Also lost. This is all totally possible. 

Or, it could be that MEM did not make English Leather prior to the 1960s, and someone at MEM coughed up a random release date of 1949 to give the brand the postwar luster that so many real postwar fragrances enjoyed. This fib would give it a rosier history than the Vietnam era could offer, and make it substantially more romantic in the eyes of vintage hounds. What guy doesn't want to envision square-jawed mad men of the 1950s powering through their martinis and secretaries while reeking of vintage MEM English Leather? Better that the Silent Generation than the Baby Boomers lay claim to the stuff.

Racquet Club (MEM Company)

My girlfriend and I went out to lunch recently, and after our meal we stopped at a nearby Goodwill to poke around a little. She bought DVDs (we still use a CRT television) and I was shocked to find a full 118 milliliter bottle of deep vintage (pre-Renaissance Cosmetics) MEM Company Racquet Club cologne splash, which led to the salesgirl begrudgingly unlocking the display case. The price? Twelve dollars. Sold. 

My reference points for Racquet Club aren't great. I'm not one of those guys that thinks twenty-first century perfumes suck, or that perfumery died when oakmoss and animalic-resinous materials went out of style, so I was never mired for more than ten minutes in stuff from the sixties and seventies. Stuff like Monsieur Rochas (1969), N°19 (1971), Lacoste (1984), and the original Lacoste Eau de Sport by Jean Patou (1968), as well as Givenchy III (1970) and Old Spice Lime (1965) are what I use for comparison, and MEM's fragrance doesn't really align well with any of them, other than perhaps Monsieur Rochas and Lacoste Eau de Sport. Released in 1978, Racquet Club is an early iteration of a standard masculine pre-eighties sport scent, with the obvious reference to sport in its name, and a fresh, citrus-aromatic scent in its plain, working man's flacon. 

This was drugstore fare in the late seventies, and my bottle probably cost between four and seven dollars in its release year (roughly between $18 and $30 adjusted for inflation). Not ridiculously expensive, but also not dirt cheap, either. The English Leather flagship of the Austrian MEM Company clearly served as the template for Racquet Club, as its burnished citrus is hinted at here, but the latter scent is brighter and fresher, with crisp lemon, lime, bergamot, lavender, and geranium, followed by clary sage and sweet coumarin with a hint of cured tobacco leaf in the base. What strikes me is the quality of materials, and how well they've held up -- this cologne dances and swirls upon application, its notes shimmering, its citrus and lavender as bright as the morning sun. Its mellow/sweet drydown is equally rich and natural in feel, making the entire wearing a true "vintage" experience. They don't make 'em like they used to.

My takeaway from it is that seventies sport frags were a gajillion miles away from what gets called "sport" in 2024, but I already knew that. Those who are just getting into fragrance and are interested in the sport genre would be well served to investigate things like Racquet Club, Pino Silvestre Sport, Claiborne Sport, and Adidas Sport Field, as well as Lacoste Eau de Sport, Sport de Paco Rabanne, Basix by Aramis, Jōvan Sport Scent, and Boss Sport. The world was very different, very different indeed.