OG perfume blogger Victoria of EauMg described Musk Therapy as smelling like "hot people effortlessly being hot," and friends, I am not immune to that sort of hyperbole; I'll even one-up it. This fragrance makes you feel like you're just better than everyone. And you'll smell so good, they'll go with it. It's got a beautiful bitter sourness like the salvia flowers just outside my house, which smell like velvety aldehydes and sparkling grapefruit peels and a musky magnolia and sandalwood soapiness that's neither too much of one nor the other, and wow...this really is a flawless, perfect summer scent.
Edited to add: a friend just described this as "Abercrombie and Witch" and that is so perfect. Musk Therapy has got a sort of citrusy-fresh normie aspect to it that seems like something you smell all the time, but it's somehow elevated to an almost preternatural extent, like citrusy fresh as commissioned by a kajillionaire sorceress. I wear it because on one hand, it makes me feel like I'm blending in, but at the same time, I'm reassuring myself, "no, no, you're really different, you're NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS" and that's when the full moon peeks from behind a cloud and then I wolf out and bite a Karen's head off when she chirps about good vibes only. No, Karen, we're gonna sit with our shit and do some shadow work, and we're gonna smell really hot while we're doing it.
So musk fragrances like this are often overlooked or dismissed as being 'nice' code for boring or at the least uninteresting, but I love them! So my review is skewed through the filter of this bias for subtle musky scents...bear that in mind. I really enjoyed musk therapy, I did it's beautiful but it has off steps which don't allow it into the upper echelons of my personal musk elite, for two reasons mainly. 1) The opening. The top notes are 'blackcurrant' which always excites me when I hear that, but rarely does it deliver, this has a smell of the classic cassis base used in lots of perfumes but whereas it's usually support to citrus and other materials (which probably are here too) it's very much out in the open, sort of exposed in such a minimal fragrance, and that's why musks of this type are so hard, because there really is nowhere to hide. It's funny because I like the smell of cassis base but I don't like it's effects when it's too noticeable, just a personal preference. 2) The musks do have that clean, touch of aldehdydic soap to them, and a floral, muguet touch that's also fine really, it's a minor gripe and one of a kind of neo-musk, purist. By that I mean the likes of Mugler's Over the musk somehow has the ability not to have to worry about entertaining you with a floral heart or anything, it's just a relentless pillow of musk, with occasional twinkles of notes popping out and playing peekaboo, like blissed out figures staggering out of the mist a rave or something? Stupefied and wanting to hug you and tell you how much they 'Love you man!' The drydown of this is a milky, creamy, beautiful sandalwood, vanilla, musk and yeah I really like it a lot, but I can't help thinking musk therapy is cheating really. Even the name makes it almost a cynical nod to the fact it's doing this. It is therapeutic. To clarify when I say cheating that's not me contradicting what I said, a musk like this is not as easy as people think it is to achieve. Real heads will enjoy this perfume I'm sure and I have too, any fault is nitpicking really but it simple doesn't make me feel how Malle, Serge, Mugler, Les Indemodable, Essential etc... It didn't move me emotionally and I think the top notes threw me. Other than that a lovely prefume, certainly worth checking out.
