FRAGRANCE | Davidoff Leather Blend EDP: Straight up leather with a tinge of sweetness

I've long associated Davidoff with its bestselling Cool Water, and shaking off that correlation is not easy. Then I blind-bought Leather Blend from someone in a Facebook fragrance group, and now Davidoff to me is no longer just a blue bottle. Turns out it's also a handsome, heavy flacon with a rich, orange-brown hue and gold-plated detailing. It looks elegant and very masculine, a great first impression from what started the Davidoff Blend Collection.

Leather Blend serves up a pretty straightforward leather scent. On my skin it's mostly dry and sharp - especially in the opening - with a slightly musky undertone. As it does in ScentSmith Perfumery's Pink Pepper Leather, pepper also contributes to the sharpness here.

Meanwhile, an ambery sweetness coats the leather but only very lightly, just enough to temper the ensuing sharpness. As in the case of oud, it's not uncommon to see leather glossed over with something sweet and fruity like in Tom Ford's Tuscan Leather or with a floral note like in Memo Paris's French Leather. So it's rather nice to find a fragrance that somehow embraces raw leather for what it is.

To be honest, I wasn't so sure about Leather Blend when I first tried it on. For a moment I doubted whether I made a bad blind buy because of the sharpness, which is something I experience with a number of other fragrances. Body chemistry or whatever but they end up like bug spray on my skin. Thankfully it didn't turn out that way.

The fragrance starts strong but soon settles into moderate territory, and goes on like this for the next couple of hours. As the sharpness decreases, the sweetness becomes more evident but it stops itself short from becoming overly sweet. The leather essence is never lost on this one. Longevity is pretty good, too.

Davidoff Leather Blend is a fragrance that, as much as it could, strikes a balance between celebrating leather for what it is and touching it up to make it a little more appealing to people. It's also reasonably priced, which all the more makes it worth trying.