Suede
Soft, velvety leather with a warm, slightly powdery feel.
You may know it from a suede jacket or pair of shoes
Where it comes from
Built from aroma chemicals to suggest soft, napped leather.
Worth knowing
It usually does not contain actual suede leather.
About suede
Suede is leather with a napped, fuzzy finish, cut from the underside of the skin, which is softer and more pliable than the outer layer. A perfumer who writes "suede" on a formula is naming the effect wanted, and the results differ a lot. Two blogs make the same point: one perfumer's suede is powdery and pink, another's is inky and dry.
Olfactive Aesthetics describes a typical build as musks, iris, fruity lactones and a small amount of leathery molecules such as saffron materials or quinolines. Saffron earns its place through safranal, the main aroma molecule of the spice, which forms during drying. About 150,000 flowers yield a single kilogram of dried saffron, and safraleine is used as a stand-in for the costly, variable natural material. Givaudan's synthetic is described as warm, powerful and leathery, with tobacco facets and a spice that recalls saffron.
A second route runs through pine resin. Suederal LT, from IFF, is made of hydrogenated rosin acid methyl esters, a hemisynthetic material from natural rosin reacted with methanol. ScenTree lists it for giving a leather effect to floral and woody compositions, and places it in the base. Olfactive Aesthetics hears dry suede in it, with warm tobacco undertones, a smoky-phenolic whisper and a castoreum-like warmth. The same source names Iso E Super as a near-odorless smoother that creates the sense of air around the leather, and Isoraldeine as the bridge to iris-powder textures. Aromara adds ethyl maltol for a powdery, sweet finish.
Sources set suede against the older leather accords, which leaned on smoke and quinoline, as the matte, skin-close version.
The name is also on a bottle. Serge Lutens Daim Blond, composed by Christopher Sheldrake, takes its name from the French word for suede, and lists suede, apricot, iris and musk. A Now Smell This review follows it down to dried apricot over a butter-soft, pale leather smoothed with iris.
Accords it shows up in
How many of the fragrances listing Suede in our catalogue also carry each accord. We counted this ourselves.
Often paired with
The notes that appear next to Suede most often in our catalogue.
Well-known fragrances with Suede
Fragrances that list it in their notes, most-rated first.
Houses that use it most
Ranked by how many of their well-known fragrances list Suede.