Collection: Animalic Fragrances

Animalic fragrances add bodily warmth and intimacy, and the family rests on four historic materials: musk, civet, ambergris, and castoreum.

Each of the four is confronting at full strength and quietly beautiful in trace amounts, which is the whole point of the family. Civet was once a paste taken from the civet cat and is intensely unpleasant undiluted, yet it gave early twentieth century perfumery much of its warmth and depth. Ambergris forms over years inside the Sperm Whale and washes up on beaches with a complex, warm, oceanic smell unlike anything else in perfumery. Castoreum contributes leather and smoke. All four are now produced synthetically, through materials such as ambroxan and civettone.