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.

Lavender is one of the oldest, and most common perfume ingredients in the world. It’s gentlemanly, scrubbed, soapy/powdery feel is a staple of men’s colognes. Lavender has a slightly spicy edge as well, which makes it a universally blendable note in perfume. It can add a clean edge to aromatic or animalic scents, and deepen zesty citrus notes with its subtle, herbal facets. But most of all, lavender is associated with fresh, clean, pure, old-school elegance. It’s well-heeled sophistication is appropriate for any time of year, and it makes an excellent choice for either sex to wear casually or formally.

Bergamot’s sheer, dry, citrusy feel is one of the most popular perfume notes, especially in mens’ cologne. It’s a Mediterranean fruit grown mainly in Calabria, Italy, and its aroma and taste is slightly between grapefruit and orange. Bergamot is a year-round pleasure to wear, and will blend well with any other note, making bergamot fragrances versatile and a sophisticated option for citrus fragrance fans.

An intoxicatingly sweet scent of many facets: velvety, smoky, balsamic and whisperingly reminiscent of tobacco. Tonka bean is an excellent fixative, extending its milky-smooth facets to mix and meld notes in complex accords. A powerful, sensual scent that is often likened to vanilla. Tonka beans are tiny, shriveled, black seeds from the Tonka tree found in Central and South America. Their slightly sweet, vanillic, and smoky hay scent adds a spicy, gourmand edge to a fragrance. Tonka beans work best in spicy and sweet scents featuring similar notes: clove, vanilla, heliotrope, bitter almonds, labdanum, cinnamon, etc. Their vanilla and hay-like scent is ideal for fall or winter, but usually blends well enough to wear any time you need a little sweet, warm spice to liven up the citrus or wood notes in a fragrance.