Vanille Havane Cuir des Abysses
Eau de Parfum, Les Indémodables (2025)

2025 has been a strange year, and I know I am far from alone in thinking so. Amongst a myriad of reasons is this one: it’s probably the first time - ever - that two of the perfume releases I have anxiously awaited the most are vanillas, Madagascar Le Baume Vanille by Parfum d’Empire, and this one, Vanille Havane Cuir des Abysses by Les Indemodables. I’m quite picky and touchy when it comes to vanilla. It is one of the most criminally mishandled perfume accords of this century, with most vanilla-forward perfumes seeming to compete for how much time they can make me spend dry-heaving. In Marc-Antoine Corticchiato, Remi and Valerie Pulverail, and Antoine Lie, I trust. I love Vanille Havane but I have yet had the chance to smell Vanille Havane Coeur de Oud, and so without a frame of reference to the latter and how Les Indemodables handle these special edition “flankers” I simply thought and expected that Cuir des Abysses was going to be Vanille Havane with a leather note added, albeit a leather note from a very special and unique material. Perhaps, subconsciously, I was trying to keep my expectations from getting unreasonably high. I was wrong. Very wrong… mostly.

The opening of Cuir is achingly familiar. The same bracing and heavily spiced rum and fruit duo that we got in the original Vanille is present and accounted for, announcing itself with intention. However, you can immediately pick-up on a difference: this isn’t a perfect facsimile of the beautiful dark beige Caribbean spiced rum of the original Vanille - an excellent choice for sipping or for a finely crafted cocktail, instead the rum in Cuir is so dark brown it is bordering on being black. We have some characters living in the heart and the base of the perfume that are not waiting their turn for a dry down, and are reaching up into these top notes with muscular determination and purpose.

Now, here it comes. Be ready. Vanille Havane is the launch pad for the leather, and launch it does. The purpose of Cuir is to use Vanille Havane to adorn the Russian leather accord with exquisite gifts - not for leather to adorn Vanille, which is a very important distinction. In one minute I detect a beautiful, cured pipe tobacco redolent of dark chocolate, vanilla, and hay like florals. Obviously the vanilla is the vanilla from the original Vanille Havane, earthy and parched, the natural sugars dehydrated and condensed to sticky black molasses, although it is noticeably less oily and less sweet than the original Vanille. In the next minute I detect the superb leather. This leather accord is incredible. At one angle it is chemically and animalic, presenting itself as very gamey and with a sheen of fresh “hot” black leather polish. At another angle, you can make out efforts to bolster it with a healthy dose of smokey birch. The styrax and birch keep backstage, working hard, never stepping forward in order to purposely make sure you are never relieved of any illusion of a real and superb Russian leather. Cuir undulates back and forth between these groups depending upon movement - particularly with distance and air. At more of a distance the leather, vanilla, and tobacco are holding hands and singing in harmony; at very short distances, nose nearly up to skin, the leather dominates. It isn’t until you reach the skin scent that some of the woodiness of the birch becomes better detectable, but still staying very cohesive with the vanilla to create what is, in essence, a classic, leathery, woody, tobacco, vanillic amber base. In the final moments the tobacco and vanillic amber have more stage presence.

I can’t shake an image out of my mind’s eye that is forcing me into a perception that this is an odd perfume - but I mean odd in the best way. Half of its DNA is Vanille Havane, or Havana Vanilla (i.e. Cuban Vanilla), and the other half is Cuir des Abysses, or Abyssal Leather, the material extracted from leather made by an artisanal tannery after they were able to recreate the long-lost Russian leather creation process after having studied leather found in a shipwreck. Cuban vanilla and tobacco, and Russian leather…? Anyone else getting the image of a Russian oligarch or diplomat, his leather reeking in the tropical Cuban heat and humidity, smoking a Cuban cigar, while he talks to the Castro regime about the merits of Communism and how Cuba can be their partner in “sticking it” to the U.S. and the capitalist West? Olfactorily it’s a beautiful pairing; thematically kind of touchy, and kind of funny and ironic in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way, since we know how that relationship panned out. Fortunately, Cuir de Abysses doesn't fall apart the same way. Anyway….

Circling back to where I started, I made the mistake of assuming a Vanille Havane flanker with no intention of being reductive towards Cuir des Abysses. It’s not a flanker. It’s its own animal. Vanille Havane could be dropped from the name and, yes you’d pull some very familiar/exact notes to Vanille Havane, but Cuir des Abysses could and would easily be its own perfume. In the crowded room of leather and vanilla ambers, Cuir des Abysses stands separate and very tall. It’s a stunning piece of work.