Musk is all about perfume, the expensive, precious scent used in amber and oriental fragrances. Yet its origin is surprising. When you find out exactly where authentic musk comes from, you're bound to fall head over heels. 

Musk: a surprising and unexpected scent of paradise

In the collective unconscious, musk is one of the best smells on earth. This natural wonder could be likened to a tropical flower of enormous beauty growing in the midst of luxuriant nature. Wrong. This aromatic substance has nothing to do with plants. Worse still, it comes straight from the entrails of an Asian deer: the chevrotin.

This species of animal, once found on the slopes of the Himalayas and in Asian forests, produces the distinctive scent of musk. How do they do it?  From an abdominal gland in the body of this oriental deer. This heavy, sometimes pestilential odor is used to attract females for mating. However, by isolating certain molecules from the chevrotin gland, the magnificent odor of the musk tahara white or black takes shape.

This luscious, prodigiously reworked scent is the origin of the controversial term "flesh perfume".

In fact, the musk of animal origin can be produced by other animals such as the American muskrat, the musk duck or the musk ox from the Arctic Circle. As for civet of plant origin, it also has a scent similar to this oriental fragrance. 

The landslide from organic matter to synthetic product

Musk has driven generations of men mad, just like the conquistadores in search of gold in the territories of the New World. This endless obsession led to the near extinction of the chevrotin. This endangered species has been reintroduced in parks  in China. Specialists continue to harvest musk without  do the animal any harm.

However, as part of the perfumeryIt's been a long time since organic musk has been on the agenda. Demand had been growing for over a century, and the fragrance market was no longer able to keep up. To drastically cut costs, a synthetic alternative to the original musk was found in 1888.

Discovered by chance, perfume houses have taken advantage of the opportunity to reclaim this essential raw material for the design of oriental fragrances.

This ingenious invention is the work of Albert Baur. This German chemist, working on explosives recipes, succeeded in finding a stabilizer capable of reproducing the scent of musk.

This turnaround enabled us to reorganize an entire industry and continue producing powerful, exotic fragrances.

To this day, very few people know the true origin of musk. Yet this providential scent is associated with purity and cleanliness.

Si bien que l’usage en fragrance soit très répandu dans les parfums en occident. Il est utilisé quotidiennement au Pakistan et dans les pays arabes pour parfumer le linge de maison dans les armoires tout comme l’incense. N’hésitez pas à découvrir notre collection de parfums dans notre boutique en ligne.