Amber · Musk · Leather

Musk

Skin, warmth, laundry, the smell of almost nothing

clean_musk 84 notes 91 materials 2 anchors · thin

What it smells like

Modern white musks are large synthetic molecules that read as clean, soft and close to the body. They are also the most common anosmia in perfumery. A meaningful share of people cannot smell some of them at all.

Where it stops

Clean Musk and Animalic were a single thing before synthesis. They are held apart now because they behave as opposites: one signals washed, the other signals unwashed.

Smells most like

skin musk - and in the same register, galaxolide, musk.

Notes that load on it

Notes from our catalogue whose position on this facet is 0.40 or higher, strongest first. A note is not filed under one facet: it carries a value on all 34 at once, and these are the ones where this axis is doing real work.

Materials that carry it

Real substances, each keyed by its CAS registry number, that an external perfumery vocabulary publishes with a term meaning this facet outright. This is the layer that makes a facet checkable against something outside our own database.

Materials carrying this facet, with registry number, source terms and regulatory status
Material CAS Terms Status
ebanol CAS 67801-20-1 musk Declarable
cosmone CAS 259854-70-1 musk
moskene CAS 116-66-5 musk IFRA
muscone CAS 541-91-3 musk
civetone CAS 542-46-1 musk
tonalide CAS 21145-77-7 musk
ambrox dl CAS 3738-00-9 musk
cashmeran CAS 33704-61-9 musk IFRA
muscogene CAS 40785-62-4 musk
versalide CAS 88-29-9 musk IFRA
galaxolide CAS 1222-05-5 musk Declarable
habanolide CAS 34902-57-3 musk
phantolide CAS 15323-35-0 musk IFRA
traseolide CAS 68140-48-7 musk
ambrettolid CAS 123-69-3 musk
androstenol CAS 1153-51-1 musk
celestolide CAS 13171-00-1 musk
musk ketone CAS 81-14-1 musk IFRA
musk xylene CAS 81-15-2 musk IFRA
lactoscatone CAS 21280-29-5 musk
tetradecanal CAS 124-25-4 musk
musk ambrette CAS 83-66-9 musk IFRA
musk tibetene CAS 145-39-1 musk IFRA
isoambrettolide CAS 28645-51-4 musk
cyclohexadecanone CAS 2550-52-9 musk IFRA
cycloheptadecanone CAS 3661-77-6 musk
cyclopentadecanone CAS 502-72-7 musk
hydrocinnamic acid CAS 501-52-0 musk
ethylene brassylate CAS 105-95-3 musk
methyl-delta-ionone CAS 7784-98-7 musk

Showing 30 of 91. The full set ships with the published standard rather than being paginated here.

Reading the two flags

Declarable means the substance appears in Annex III of the EU Cosmetics Regulation, so it has to be named on the ingredient list once it passes a concentration threshold. IFRA means an IFRA Standard restricts or prohibits its use. Both are facts about the substance, not about any fragrance: a perfume can contain a declarable material below the threshold and never print it, and a restricted material used within its limit is used correctly.

The source also supplies no common name for a large share of materials, so those display as a bare registry number and are ranked last. They are kept because they are real evidence: dropping them would make the vocabulary look better described than it is.

Anchor terms

A facet on its own is just a word we chose. An anchor is what makes it checkable: a term in an external, independently maintained vocabulary of odour descriptions, built for perfumery materials rather than for us. The material list above is drawn from the direct terms only, because a partial term corroborates too weakly to stand as evidence on its own.

Direct Terms that mean this facet outright
  • musk
  • musky
Partial Terms that lean this way but also load elsewhere
  • clean
  • soapy
Thinly anchored

This facet rests on 2 direct terms, which makes it one of the more likely to move when the crosswalk is revised or a better source is found. It is flagged here rather than presented as equal in weight to a facet held up by nine.

The rest of Amber · Musk · Leather

The other facets in this family. A note can load on any of them at the same time as this one, so they are neighbours rather than alternatives.

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