Parfum d’Empire Musc Tonkin Review & Sample Winners

So… the big feral musk bomb build-up is over, Marc-Antoine Corticchiato’s Parfum d’Empire Musc Tonkin is in our hands.  Was it worth the wait?  

Ryan Gosling is never disappointing

Ryan Gosling is the perfect body to get us all in the mood for

Parfum d’Empire Musc Tonkin.  

Let’s unpack what MAC (I’m using the shorthand for Corticchiato’s name, because my bad typing keeps blowing it up) has been up to with this. First, he’s managed to hit all of my triggery, nerve-shattering perfume ticks.

1. Limited edition, only 1,000 bottles made, with no word if it will ever be made again under any circumstances
2. No notes listed.
3. Promotional copy that makes my teeth grind – “It is to capture this fascinating ghost that Musc Tonkin reinvents it by blending the most opulent raw materials to conjure its myriad facets. Their names don’t matter: like the mysterious charisma of certain people who draw us into their wake, Musc Tonkin should be experienced rather than described. Vibrant, faceted, surprising, at once nocturnal and solar, this aphrodisiac potion changes on each skin, the better to enhance it. A lick of salt for the taste of skin. A heady floral whiff to remind us that perfume links our bodies to the erotic spells of nature. A liquorous, mulled-fruit burn contrasting with a light, shimmering veil of powder…”

You know, even while anticipating its arrival with much pacing and sighing, I’m expecting great things and pretty sure nothing can overcome my projected expectations and annoyance.

Nice job, Corticchiato, you manged to do it.  Parfum d’Empire Musc Tonkin opens like a cat in heat, leaving nothing but a gasp for just how rank this thing is.  That would have been enough because I love diving into skanky, rank, feral perfume, but it doesn’t stop there, it evolves into something as feral, but more knowing, more sophisticated, showing more of itself it you just work your way past all the things that are either distracting or off-putting.  

There is this moment when I came to understand the thing about musk that I didn’t know until I wrote the Musk Perfume Guide. It is vulnerable. Under all that sexual swagger, musk opens its quiet, secret places, rolls over on its back, closes its eyes and tells you it’s afraid of the dark and being alone.  

Did you see that movie “Crazy, Stupid Love” with Steve Carell?  There is a scene where Emma Stone has gone home with “Hot Guy From the Bar,” Ryan Gosling, and she just wants sex, she thinks.  But as they are getting into it, she starts asking him about the pillow that conforms to her head, and then he starts telling her he has one of those $3,000 vibration chairs in his garage that he hates and has used like twice and he stays up late watching shopping TV and has the entire Coin Bears collection.  So this hot sex that was about to happen is now conversation unwrapping a layer at a time of who they are.  The moment comes when Ryan asks her to do him a kindness and ask him something personal about himself.  She asks him about his mom, and he starts talking about his parents. That moment is raw vulnerability, where outwardly sexy becomes love as it invites you in to share who someone is.

Parfum d’Empire Musc Tonkin draws you in, slowly revealing who it is.  There is an old world perfume feel surrounding it, but with none of the “vintage” perfume trajectory.   [pullquote]I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,  in secret, between the shadow and the soul.  – Pablo Neruda[/pullquote]It is knowing without disillusion.  I’ve been wearing Musc Tonkin for over a week, probably every day, hoping to discover all of its secrets, but they elude me.    I have no idea of what notes he used to make this illusion of natural musk, and I really stopped caring after the second day of wearing it.  There is a salty skin smell, the smell of “needs a shower” body hasn’t quite tipped over into SHOWER NOW and has all those rank elements accumulating, smelling soft, salty, warm and fuzzy.  While there is a rank sexuality and sensuality about it, it’s not base or common.  It’s a sensuality deepened by familiarity.  Oh, sorry, yeah I went there with Neruda! 

Parfum d’Empire Musc Tonkin is seriously sex in a bottle, but it’s not cheap sex –  $140 for 50 mls – but I still think for extrait that’s a damn bargain.  It’s world-class sex with Ryan Gosling or Emma Stone (take your pick!)  and they were interesting and not just pretty movie stars.  

We have some lucky people who are going to get  samples from that giveaway on my Why do you Wear Fragrance navel-gazing post from a couple of weeks ago. 

Winners are – Elena,  Amer, Tammy and LCT.  Just click on the Drop us a Line at the very top or email patty at perfumeposse dot com with your mailing address, remind me what you’ve won, I’ll shoot you a quick e-mail confirm so you know you didn’t land in my spam filter, and then I’ll get you a little sample of this amazing perfume.  

Since Parfum d’Empire Musc Tonkin is a limited edition, let’s have another drawing for this.   Just drop a comment and talk about whatever you want to be entered, up to and including how long you’d like to get Ryan Gosling alone with no talking.  I’ll close the drawing on Friday 12/7/12.