Civet Musk Mukhallat Sharif LaRoche

* Mukhallat means mixture, in perfumery it is taken to mean that it contains a mixture of different pure oils that makes up the perfume oil.

I will not lie. The opening made me wonder what a unwashed cat's bum might smell like ( I say cat because I have one but you could exchange it for any other animal you wish).  Thankfully I'm not one to shy away from smells of excretions or whatnot and in this case my faith paid off( my faith was firmly instilled after Sharif LaRoche's goddess of a Ambergris Taifi Rose turned my head away from demigods forever). 

Anyway. I'll politely describe the opening as bitter, black, pungent and oily. By the way this perfume oil is so strong, i smeared the littlest drop on my upper arm and it's as loud as a heavy metal concert from the front row. 

It gets comfortable after a few minutes and settles down on my skin, the bitterness is still there but a sweet dark muskiness has started blooming from my skin instead of the initial barnyard funk. It's still very much oily and pungent but there's something about it that's oddly attractive. I guess that's civet for you and why it's so sought after and pricey in perfumery and coffee alike. If you enjoy clean soapy musks or polite musks like Narciso Rodriguez's musks, this might not be to your liking. However, if you live for musks like Kiehl's original musk or Serge Lutens' Musc Koublai Khan, you must give this a try, that being said even MKK is lightweight compared to this. It's very much in the unisex department, although if you are strictly into light scents or polite scents, you might want to pass on this. 

The oil projects and persists for an almost obnoxiously long time, not forgetting that this is all from one itsy bitsy smear from the stick of a dab sample. The sample was kindly included along with three others with my purchase of 1 ml of Ambergris Taifi.