DISCONTINUED wOODY MUSKS I CHERISHED

 Are you familiar with what a well balanced woody floral musk fragrance is? (Not an animalic musk fragrance based on black musc nor  an ambergris fragrance.) We are talking about the art of woody floral musk perfumes. An art so very well cultivated in the Middle East and in the Northern African countries (Arabic speaking countries of Northern Africa).

The classic woody floral musk

scent opens with citrusy fruits, herbs, white flowers, spices, greens and woods and always ends with  the flower of white musk, the flower or plant is called rosalita or musk rose,  it isn't a rose it is the flower you see in my picture and in the notes of the fragrance is mentioned as musk. Of course genius perfumers in our wild wild West managed to make woody green musk fragrances more linear and minimalistic and contemporary. This article is about two examples of both cases  I used to wear and both are now discontinued without the perfume making houses giving an excuse. There's absolutely no trace of nostalgia in this read. However, I do remember so well these two perfumes and I can honestly say  they provided consolation to me. A fluffy cosiness and consolation because urban living lifestyle has always been full of competition anxiety. You might think I always write about discontinued gems and you might be right. A perfume we loved and got discontinued is a loss for the wearer. It has something of a haunting experience. One might be  feeling this discontinued perfume as a little tragedy they have to accept and tolerate and learn to deal with this loss. A loss is not always a loss of a pet or person. Do you agree?

Eau de Cartier eau de parfum was a unisex launch in 2016 nearly a decade ago. The perfumer who designed the scent is not mentioned so we can assume the scent was designed by the in house perfumer at the time Matilde Laurent. What a vibrant scent... gosh! Divine for me. Many people who are not familiar with floral woody musks complained about the sillage and longevity. These were actually fine in this case. The perfume opened with lemon, grapefruit and bergamot. Middle notes were jasmin,hedione galbanum , neroli and violet leaves. And the base notes were Peru balsam, patchouli, vanilla, amber and musk . No matter how down or blue you felt you sprayed this amazing scent and instantly you cheered up and would play British uptempo romantic new wave like the New Order's song "Bizarre love triangle"

After the big bang of Terre d'Hermes we got re-introduced to the earthly seduction of geranium leaves for one more time in the history of perfumery. So Guerlain launched this green woody musk called L'eau boisee Eau de toulette in 2012 a fragrance by Thiery Wasser. The scent was very versatile,not too fresh not too earthly. It is mentioned as modern  chypre but in my opinion I could conceive it as a green woody musk. You put this on and life was suddenly cool. Longevity on my skin was four hours but it was such a cool contemporary woody musk. It featured notes such as mint,grass ,lime, dark rum, vetiver, geranium leaves, white musk,cedar and oak. 

Are you familiar with these two fragrances? What did you think about them wnen you tried them on? Have you got a favourite woody floral musk or a woody green musk you cherish? Which one is it?