Filling the Musk Gap (I): Serge Lutens Muscs Koublaï Khan or Dionysus’ Panther

The disappearance of natural musk in perfumery has created a gap that various perfumers (not to mention every single aromachemical company) have tried to fill. But rather than use it to emphasize other notes, their compositions use musk as a solo player, either in a minimalist mode (Helmut Lang’s discontinued Velviona in 2001, which contained only Givaudan’s synthetic musk Velvione), or in the hyperbolic and orientalist mode of animal musk.

Musk “soliflores” are absent from classical perfumery: if they have any forebears, they can be found either in the pre-modern tradition of smelling musk grains (before the late 19th century) or in the various hippie-era “musks” (Jovan, Bonne Bell) – in turn partly inspired by the North African or Asian perfumery discovered by 60s flower children on their way to Marrakesh or Katmandu…

In any case, these musks are the polar opposite of the sweetish, white “detergent” musks, whose exquisite powdery blandness points to childhood rather than to Bacchanalia.

Within this rather restricted perfume family, Serge Lutens’ Muscs Koublaï Khan, launched in 1998, remains the benchmark of all dirty musks. Its name is inspired by Marco Polo’s detailed descriptions of musk in his memoirs about his journeys in the Mongol emperor’s Chinese realm.

This very controversial composition – which tends to make American forum commentators howl with horror or delight – is a cornucopia of animalic smells: stable, circus, wildcat cages and barrack-rooms… Fecal civet, leather and fur-smelling castoreum, costus with its whiff of dirty hair, armpit-reeking cumin, ambergris with its saline, female notes, patchouli and its dank earth facets, are barely lightened up by Moroccan rose and ambrette, with its powdery, floral and boozy pear tartness.

Added to this devil’s brew is a wide range of synthetic musks. Most of us are anosmic to one or the other: their molecules are too large to be perceived. Thus, to achieve a replica of natural musk, a perfumer must use a diversified palette. This phenomenon makes it hard to judge musk “soliflores”, because the tester may be anosmic to one or several compounds. On me, for instance, Muscs Koublaï Khan’s wilcat mellows into a purr, another example of the mysterious alchemy of perfumery, which transforms vile substances into fragrant elixirs.

If Muscs Koublaï Khan conjures up the smell of wildcats, it isn’t so much the stench of a circus menagerie as the suave aroma of the panther in Greek mythology – the panther of Dionysus, the god of drunken raptures.

According to the philosopher Theophrastus, the panther is the only animal that doesn’t stink: she uses the perfume she exhales to entice her prey. Her exquisite breath is a mortally seductive trap similar to the one that women lay out for men. This leads Aristophanes to call courtesans “panthers”.

Thus, the intoxicating Muscs Koublaï Khan seems to me closer to the enticements of Aphrodite’s huntresses than to the reek of a Mongol warrior after a six-month rampage spree. I have used up two full bottles without losing my friends or scaring off my lovers: from which I deduce that this fragrance is rather more pleasing than not…

Image: Dionysus riding a panther, mosaïc floor, courtesy of www.macedonian-heritage.gr