Skin Musk

Skin musk describes a musk accord tuned to smell like clean, warm human skin rather than like perfume. It is made from modern synthetic musks, materials such as ambrette seed, and soft lactonic notes that together create a gentle, slightly sweet warmth with no sharp edges.

Natural animal musk has not been used in perfumery for decades; today's musks are laboratory-made, which is both an ethical improvement and a creative one, because they can be shaped precisely. Skin musks are the softest of them: quiet, close-wearing and often described as smelling like the wearer, only better.

Because these molecules are large and slow to evaporate, skin musk mostly appears in the base, where it extends the life of a fragrance and smooths the transition from heart to drydown. It also has a curious effect on projection: the scent stays near the body, so people tend to notice it only at conversational distance.

Anyone who wants an everyday signature, or who finds strong perfumes tiring, will find skin-musk fragrances easy to live with. Note that musks interact with individual skin chemistry more than most materials, so the same scent can smell subtly different on different people. At Redolia Perfumery this page gathers every fragrance in our catalogue that features skin musk.