What is happening here? Why have I not reviewed this? Did my review get voted out of existance? How could I let such an oversight go unchecked? For a while at least it was my favourite MDCI but revisiting the samples from this house again this week I've realised that Claude Marchal's vision for this brand is one I admire, and everything is good. I don't feel I had the level of maturity to appreciate the full body of work the first time around. At that point I had rejected the nicely, nicely, French perfumery approach and was seeking the visceral, wacky thrills of niche and Indy perfumers. Having got that out of my system I still arrive back at Cuir Garamante and I'm stunned by just what a great perfume it is. The opening is leathery, indulgent and does smack of lots of things I was into at the time of first trying and probably why I didn't pursue CG more intently. So... from memory then, I got an incense sandalwood and vanilla vibe accented with resins and it kinda is that still. However, upon todays trial I get much more of an unusual and enticing quality of rose wrapped in a hyper creamy accord comprised of sandalwood materials, not nutty or cedarish, pencil shaving but not a million miles from palo santo actually. Now that stuff is an almost unusable material for numerous reasons but mainly the off putting creepy rubber and mint facets, and it's ipecac, sickliness to boot. However some strange nicer quality of Mysore sandalwood is captured in this fragrance and with the rose it can evoke one classic perfume. Chanel Egoiste. The selfish man's choice for smelling great, however this is even more rich and densely layered with that labdanum/resins effect and a sort of gourmand, shortbread accent. There's top notes too, it's not all bases and mids and that is what makes it shine through and ultimately the leather quality of the name too. It's more magic from MDCI and it's not even my second or third favourite now but I still love this thing!