7 Perfumes That Smell Like Musk

Musk is the strangest note in perfume: sometimes the loudest thing in the bottle, sometimes so quiet it seems to vanish, and sometimes literally invisible to some noses. These seven run from clean “your skin but better” musks to warm, animalic ones. Start with Glossier You for skin, Narciso Rodriguez For Her for the polished classic, and Musc Ravageur if you want musk with a growl.

What Is Musk in Perfume?

Originally, a secretion from a gland of the male musk deer, dried and tinctured. That’s long gone from mainstream perfume: the deer are protected, and every musk you’ll smell in a modern bottle is made in a lab. There are three families:

• Nitro musks, the first synthetics. Albert Baur found the first one in 1888 while working on explosives. Most are now banned or restricted for safety reasons.
• Polycyclic musks like Galaxolide: clean, sweet and cheap. These are the musks in detergent and fabric softener, which is why they smell like clean laundry.
• Macrocyclic musks like ambrettolide: closer to the natural material, warmer, softer and more skin-like. They’re what “skin scent” perfumes are built on.

There’s a twist. Musk molecules are large, and many people have a specific anosmia to one or more of them: they can’t smell that musk at all. That’s why one person finds a musk perfume lovely and the friend next to them smells almost nothing. The musk guide has more on the chemistry.

Perfume	Kind of musk	What’s with it
Glossier You	Skin	Pink pepper, iris, ambrette, Ambrox
Le Labo Another 13	Clean and mineral	Ambroxide, jasmine, moss
Serge Lutens Clair de Musc	Powdery and pale	Bergamot, iris
Maison Francis Kurkdjian Aqua Universalis	Clean laundry	Bergamot, citron, white flowers
Calvin Klein CK One	Fresh 90s	Bergamot, pineapple, green tea, amber
Narciso Rodriguez For Her EDP	Polished	Rose, peach, amber, patchouli
Frédéric Malle Musc Ravageur	Warm and animalic	Vanilla, amber, sandalwood, spice

7 Musk Perfumes

Glossier You

Glossier’s original You puts pink pepper and iris over ambrette and Ambrox. Ambrette is a musky seed from the hibiscus family, and Ambrox is the woody, salty molecule behind modern ambergris accords. Together they smell like warm skin, slightly sweet and slightly woody, and the pepper and iris add a little sparkle and powder. It’s the musk for people who don’t want to smell of perfume.

One wearer bought it after smelling it on a friend and got only pencil shavings on their own skin. That’s the anosmia problem in action, and the Ambrox’s woodiness. You Doux and Rêve are different perfumes.

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Le Labo Another 13

Another 13 began in 2010 as a commission for AnOther Magazine and is now part of Le Labo’s main line. It’s built on ambroxide, jasmine and moss, and the Ambrox dominates: dry, mineral and slightly salty, like clean skin after a swim. It’s sleeker and colder than You, with more presence.

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Serge Lutens Clair de Musc

Christopher Sheldrake’s Clair de Musc (2003) is musk, bergamot and iris, and the name means “pale musk”. It’s the gentlest musk here: powdery, soft and luminous, with the iris giving it a cosmetic, faintly floral glow. It’s the musk for people who find Musc Ravageur too much and Glossier You too woody.

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Maison Francis Kurkdjian Aqua Universalis

Aqua Universalis is bergamot and citron over white flowers and light musky woods. It’s the polycyclic, clean-laundry side of musk done expensively: a crisp white shirt in a sunny room. The citrus and lily of the valley keep it bright, and the musk is what’s still there an hour later. It’s the easiest musk here to wear anywhere.

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Calvin Klein CK One

Alberto Morillas and Harry Frémont made CK One (1994) as one of the first big unisex perfumes. Its notes are bergamot, cardamom, pineapple and papaya, a floral heart with nutmeg, and musk and amber, with a green-tea freshness running through it. The musk is what made it feel modern in 1994: a clean, shared, T-shirt smell where most perfumes were big florals. It’s inexpensive and still easy to like.

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Narciso Rodriguez For Her Eau de Parfum

Narciso Rodriguez built his whole fragrance line around musk. For Her EDP, in the pink bottle, sets the house musk accord with rose, peach, amber and patchouli. The rose and peach make it softer and prettier than the original EDT, which is closer to soap and skin. This is the polished office musk: sweet, warm and recognisable.

The black-bottle EDT is a different composition, and it’s on our soap list.

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Frédéric Malle Musc Ravageur

Maurice Roucel’s Musc Ravageur (2000) means “ravaging musk”. It puts bergamot, mandarin and lavender over a warm amber of vanilla, sandalwood and spice, with musk running through all of it. This is musk at its most animalic and warm: skin, but hot skin. One bottle owner finds it smooth and spicy, not animalic at all; another finds the musk too animalic to wear, which is the musk-anosmia lottery again.

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Which Musk Should You Pick?

• Your skin but better: Glossier You.
• Clean and mineral: Another 13.
• Powdery and gentle: Clair de Musc.
• Clean shirt: Aqua Universalis.
• Budget and nostalgic: CK One.
• Polished: Narciso Rodriguez For Her EDP.
• Warm and animalic: Musc Ravageur.

If clean musk is your thing, our laundry perfumes go further, and soap perfumes share many of the same molecules. The skin-scent definition explains that term.