The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Leather Haze arrived in 2018 as part of And Other Stories' Layering Scents collection, a modular concept within the brand's fragrance range. The collection offered scents meant to function in combination with one another, allowing different pieces from the same line to be worn together. Leather Haze pulled the smoky, woody end of the palette, and its composition of leather, smoke, and dark fruit notes gave it a distinct profile within the range. The fragrance is built around a contrast between sharp, almost jammy fruit and a leather accord that leans toward smoke rather than polish. Blackcurrant, plum, and saffron create an opening that reads as dark and slightly metallic, more aromatic than sweet, before the suede and birch smoke settle in.
What makes the composition interesting is the unusual tension between blackcurrant, saffron, and suede. The fruit-saffron opening creates a bruised, almost jammy sweetness before the leather arrives, which means the drydown doesn't read as traditional at all. The birch smoke and mahogany ground everything without flattening it, while violet does quiet structural work in the heart, keeping the composition from smelling purely like a jacket. The leather here reads soft and suede-like rather than polished or varnished, more worn-in than new.
The evolution
The first fifteen minutes are almost disorienting. Blackcurrant and plum arrive sharp and dark, pulled into territory that's less jam than raw, unsweetened fruit. Saffron adds a metallic warmth underneath, giving the opening a bruised, slightly tense quality that sets the tone before anything has fully developed. By the twenty-minute mark, juniper and violet start threading through, and the composition shifts toward something greener and more aromatic. The leather hasn't arrived yet. The heart phase, somewhere around the one-hour mark, is where suede and birch smoke finally settle in, replacing the fruit's sharpness with something warmer and more opaque. Mahogany deepens the base, giving the leather weight without making it stiff. Four hours in, most of the fruit is gone.
Cultural impact
Leather Haze occupies an interesting corner of the leather-smoke fragrance category, taking the genre seriously while remaining accessible in pricing and availability. Its composition of dark fruit, saffron, and birch smoke places it in dialogue with more established leather fragrances, but the choice to keep the fruit forward rather than burying it under heavy base notes gives the scent a different identity.
