Cuir Tassili: My Leather & Lace

Some perfumes introduce themselves politely. Others not so much.

Cuir Tassili walks in with a presence — half leather jacket, half lace slip — and somehow both feel right.

I’ve been completely obsessed with this fragrance lately. It’s marketed as unisex. But it’s also deeply contradictory. Some days it leans into its structured, leathery edges. Other days it opens into sweetness and softness. It shape-shifts as my body moves throughout the day.

Every time I wear it, I hear Stevie Nicks singing “Give to me your leather — Take from me my lace” from her 1981 hit with Don Henley, Leather and Lace. That’s exactly what this fragrance is — a duet of leather and lace.

A Scent Scape, But Not Mine

Maison Rebatchi describes Cuir Tassili as a “scent-scape” inspired by the Tassili desert — lemon sherbets, Tuareg tea, camel saddles, black pepper swirling under tent fabric. I can picture it, even without ever having been there.

But what I experience is simpler, closer:

A leather note that pulses through the fragrance — smooth, smoky, Not motorcycle-jacket leather. More like a perfectly worn satchel, or a warm patch of skin under a shirt collar. Familiar, lived-in.

“It Smells Like Daddy’s Deodorant.”

My daughter smelled it and said: “It smells like Daddy’s deodorant.”

And she’s right — there’s a familiarity to it. Maybe that’s why I love it. It’s a scent you lean toward. Steady. Reliable. Like my husband.

But then it shifts. The lemon and iris in the top notes are delicately sweet and the tea, rosemary, and patchouli pull it into something softer, more sultry, more feminine.

The Leather & the Lace

This fragrance is in full duality — strength and softness, dust and sweetness, something ancient and modern all at once.

On my skin, it wears like:

Leather: Warm. Earthy. Grounding. That familiar lingering of my husband.

Lace: The sweetness threading through — airy, tender, a little powdery, like something that drapes instead of clings.

Cuir Tassili wears like the meeting of two textures that shouldn’t fit together but somehow do — strong and structured, while also being light and breathable, like lace moving in a desert breeze.

A Mysterious Obsession

I can’t fully place this perfume — and maybe that’s the point. It’s elusive, one moment leather, the next the gentleness of lace.

All I know is that I love it.

And sometimes that’s enough.

A little bit leather.

A little bit lace.

A fragrance I feel, more than I understand.