The Lover's Tale by Francesca Bianchi

"This is a story of by-gone times about a secret encounter of lovers. It represents the contradictions between sense and sensibility, pruderie and passion. The lovers are full of desire but their education holds them back."

Picture taken by me. The Kiss by Klimt. 

If you are expecting The Lover's Tale to be some sort of Romeo and Juliet, The Kiss by Klimt or another romantic love story represented in perfume accords, then you couldn't be more wrong.
Characterized by a certain amount of wildness, The Lover's Tale is only romantic in a primal way, and it could easily pass as a Zoologist release if named Tiger. 

The Lover's Tale is not an easy going fragrance - it's intense, it screams and it may result disturbing for people that are not used to or are not into animalics (read fecal), especially in the opening, where the leather accord is potentiated by castoreum and jasmine, with honeyed specks of an half-hidden violet, that creates an indolic aura around the scent.
This is not a "fine pair of gloves or a new bag" type of leather - it's more of the "Tarzan's and Jane's splendor-in-a-jasmine-bush that would make Cheetah blush" kind.

I can easily see the vintage Cuir de Russie by Chanel inspiration that Sergey Borisov mentioned in his Fragrantica article, an almost fecal leather that could make even an elephant faint with its funkiness.

The barnyard odor easily noticed in most of the leather fragrances comes from the combination of various animal-smelling ingredients, one of them being the birch tar, that gives the specific tarry smell that the Russian leather* has. 

The leather accord in The Lover's Tale mimics at its best the Russian one, but, in this case it's well mannered despite its rawness and it dominates the fragrance from head to toe passing from noisy to muffled, from an image to another while it interact with the rest of the ingredients.
After an immense opening, where it settles as the protagonist, the leather develops under the wings of a slightly oily and powdery floral gathering that adds a fluffy texture to the composition smoothing it and preparing it for the warm base, where a deep labdanum lays. The presence of a ripe peach that levitate like an invisible veil above a silent oakmoss stands as a stark reminder of another great classic - Mitsouko by Guerlain, but contrary to this great chypre, in The Lover's Tale's dry down the presence of both, the sandalwood and the labdanum, gives a sense of calm and richness, and places the leather in a secondary position where is wrapped in a soft mimosa that ads a baby-back-head smell.

In conclusion, The Lover's Tale is dense and it has pointed teeth, is strong and daring, and it doesn't melt into the wearer skin becoming one like it happens in Under my Skin case. It's a leather fragrance for the bold ones whose elements combine to perfection to create this powerful potion that sets a high standard for the others of its kind.

The Lover's Tale will be released by the end of October 2018.

*Russian leather distinguish from the other types of leathers by the very difficult to replicate process of manufacturing. First, the leather is tanned using tree bark. The whole process takes five weeks to complete - the leather is soaked in tanbark (it takes 2880 liters of it for 150 hides of raw leather) with agitation twice a day and replacement of the tan once a week. After the tanning the process continues with oiling of the leather by birch oil which is applied on the rear face of the leather. Russian leather was a major export product in Russia in the 17th and 18th centuries due to its high quality and variety of uses. The birch tar was also used for a long time by the Russian soldiers to tan and to waterproof their boots. Cuir de Russie is linked to Coco's affair with the Grand Duke - Dimitri Pavlovich Romano, and it was created in 1925 by Ernest Beaux who most definitely used materials, like musk, that are completely prohibited nowadays to recreate the leather accord. Recreated in 1983 by Jacques Polge, the actual Cuir de Russie is a toned down version of what it was.

Sample provided by Francesca Bianchi, opinions are my own.