Mystery of Musk: my observations on three more

I have been wearing three entries for the Mystery of Musk Project for the past 2 days. I would never, ever, ever, ever, [ever] sniff solely from a blotter because; 1. That’s just wrong and you will not receive a true impression of the fragrance and, 2. You simply must wear all natural/botanical perfumes on your skin. Thems the rules.

I’m loathe to write this post because the three perfumes I’ve been testing just aren’t to my liking whatsoever. I mean, I can barely describe them in a useful manner. So, here goes, and I’m cringing:

Alexandra Balahoutis, perfumer behind Strange Invisible Perfumes created a scent called Temple of Musk for this project. I like several fragrances from SIP; namely Fire & Cream, Magazine Street, and all of her tuberose scents, Heroine, Narcotic and Trapeze. SIP is a line that took some time investment from me; I had to become accustomed to the initial blast of medicinal-balsamic-ick that seems to start off all her fragrances. Well, accustomed I am, so now it’s no longer a problem and I think SIP has a handful of masterpieces. I own SIP Musc Botanique so I expected some similarities with that one. I approached SIP Temple of Musk with familiarity and hopefulness. Sorry to say this is not my cup of tea. Temple of Musk starts medicinal and ends medicinal and there just isn’t anything here for me to even attempt to tease apart. Thankfully it doesn’t last long. After an hour I smell wet cardboard and then it’s gone.

Lisa Fong, perfumer behind Artemisia Natural Perfume created a fragrance called Drifting Sparks. Drifting Sparks is not unpleasant but it also contains a strong medicinal aroma with some vague florals in its heart and finishes off quite quickly not lingering longer than 60 minutes on my skin.

Adam Gottschalk, nose from Lord’s Jester, created a scent called Dionysus. Dionysus is sweeter and easier to wear than the above two scents. Dionysus seems strongly vanillic and maybe even more like chocolate than vanilla with a balsamic note over this vague medicinal quality I’ve been experiencing with several others.

I did not smell musk, or what I perceive to be musk, or cumin, civet or anything of that sort in these three fragrances. I am sniffing with an open mind, so I was hopeful to find something that DID smell musky, albeit in a non-synthetic botanical structure, but I’m just not finding this to be the case.