Alluring, sensual, enticing… Musk is well-known for its aphrodisiac powers. Perfumers play with a myriad of synthetic musks to fix, blend and mold ingredients in a number of intoxicating accords. These notes are clean and transparent—lending a velvety, skinny effect. Musk notes in perfume used to be processed from the actual musk glands of animals to impart a gamey, warm, and sensual texture. But this practice is illegal in modern times, and nowadays musk notes in fragrance are entirely synthetic. Musk’s tangy aroma can range from sheer, metallic and bright to very animalic and even as intimate as the scent of warm, damp, human skin. Musk adds a sultry, sensual feel to demure feminine scents, as well as making masculine notes like tobacco and leather vividly expressive in cologne. For perfume fans who enjoy the alluring scent of warm, clean, skin - musk is a must-have note in fragrance.

A must-have in any perfumer’s arsenal, sandalwood forms the base note of countless fragrance compositions. Its milky, suave facets make for a deliciously blendable fixative that has inspired perfumers for millennia. It’s a woody and ambery note with a pervasive warmth that is both velvety-smooth and decadently creamy. Sandalwood’s mystical scent is found everywhere in perfumery. It’s luxurious, milky, tangy, and caramel-sweet aroma infuses a fragrance with deep, exotic accents. Sandalwood can also appear bright and bone-dry, and display its arid, woody side in a gorgeous and austere perfume. Sandalwood’s depth of tone and smooth, polished texture adds elegance, refinement, and mystery to any perfume - it can mimic vanilla’s deliciously sweet, butter-fat heaviness, or fade into cedar’s sharp and bitter feel. It’s also a fantastic and evocative scent on it’s own as well as in a blended fragrance. Sandalwood’s tastefully exotic lusciousness is wearable year-round by either sex, and you could spend a lifetime sampling all the different ways it can be used in perfumery.

Fruity, fresh and fragrant, apple notes are commonly used as heart notes in both functional and fine perfumery to evoke a sweet and juicy essence. The green, fruity tonic fragrance blends easily with other notes, offering versatility in all its crisp and smooth complexity. Apple notes are often used across both men’s and women’s fragrances. Pear’s exotic, sugary sparkle enhances citrus and floral perfumes and opens up more palate possibilities in your scent wardrobe. It’s melon-y sweet, but very crisp and dry, making it an excellent punctuation point in fragrance. Pear goes best with other tropical citrus notes like yuzu fruit, litchee, peach, and pineapple. But it’s also fantastic with sharp spices like ginger and cinnamon - spices whose dry, crisp flair will allow pear’s natural juiciness to come forward. So if you enjoy fruity floral scents, but with a more sophisticated, tailored, and exotic edge, pear perfumes are worth seeking out.

A dynamic ingredient with facets ranging from musky and woody to sweet and warm, cashmeran is the Pandora’s Box of perfume ingredients. Best known for its ability to “expand” floral notes, cashmeran serves as a malleable product in the hands of perfumers—melting into floral notes with its warmth and sensuality to create vibrantly layered accords.