Sweat

Note Profile

Abstract 2 perfumes

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About

Sweat is an abstract body note. In perfume it reads as warm, salty human skin, animalic and close to musk. Behind it sits the real smell of body odour. That smell is sour and cheesy from short-chain acids, and onion-like from sulphur compounds. Perfumes use the skin reading and keep the sour side to a trace.

Scent Profile

Sweat smells of warm, salty skin first. It is animalic and close to musk, skin after effort rather than stale clothes. A sour, cheesy edge runs under it. Some uses show a faint onion-like sulphur note, and a trace of warm cumin.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeBase · ~12h lasting

Family Amber · Musk · Leather, Fruity

Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.

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ScentArt

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Origin

Not a material. Fresh sweat is nearly odourless. Skin bacteria break it down into the smell of body odour. Isovaleric and propionic acid give the sour, cheesy side. A sulphur compound, (S)-3-methyl-3-sulfanylhexan-1-ol, gives an onion-like side. 2-Nonenal, greasy and grassy, rises with age. Perfumers build the note from cumin or cuminaldehyde, animalic bases and musks, with isovaleric acid at most in micro doses.

Usage in Perfumery

About 20 perfumes listed sweat as a note on 2026-10-10. Nearly all are niche releases from 2021 onward. It sits in the heart of Molotov Cocktail (Sylhouette Parfums, 2023) and Pelle di Fauno (Manuel Attardi, 2024), and in the base of Amyi 3.17 (2022). It is a deliberate transgression, used where a composition wants skin and effort instead of clean musk. Cumin usually carries the effect. Nothing published says how much is used.