And in the second part of the “Blame (or thank) VerbenaLuvvr” one of the extras that Mr. Jeffrey Dame sent along with my order of Juste Filthy was the cream base of Scatamalis. This is the six base notes of Juste Filthy; just(e) patchouli, vetiver, cedar, civet, skatole and musk.
Shy it’s not.
Now I do know that it is kind of weird that I will spend money on something that makes me kind of stinky after spending gobs of money and literally hours trying to make sure that there is absolutely no natural smell coming off me at all. Nature, Mr. Allnut, and all that. But some of my favorite scents are ones that, to some people, just stink. I have and love the long gone Untitled #8 by Brent Leonesio, have and love at least five on Patty’s list of musk fragrances, missing only one (and still kicking myself for that..) holy grail.
This one stinks.
I would wear it on it’s own because I am just that way. I would also use it to add some oomph to scents that had ben neutered by reformulation and the ravages of time. Not just ones that you would think of, but ones like Chanel No.5, which I believe back in the day had a sneaky little bit of animalic in it. Since you can get a small cream for $8 (and they do trial sizes of the other, less intimidating scents in the line) you can decide for yourself whether this is a yes or a “oh hell to the no!”
I clearly decided “yes!” (but don’t worry, I’ll warn you I’m coming..)
Have you tried these? Are they Green Acres good IYO or landfill lousy? Lets discuss in the comments. (and if you have shankier ones I am dying to know..
My items were purchased from the perfumer, except the cream, which was a GWP.
Images: My iPhone, Wikimedia Commons, Pexels
I am a big fan of Juste Filthy and Scatamalis. I didn’t find JF filthy at all, but quite beautiful, especially combined with Scatamalis. My partner, who is a CK One type of perfume user, said it smelled sweet. Someone on a perfume blog recommended to use Scatamalis to boost vintage fragrances like Kéora. That’s a lot of fun!
Welcome!
I don’t finger Juste Filthy that filthy either, and I really like Scatamalis. I’ve been trying it as a “booster” for other perfumes. Which makes me wonder what it would do to CKone..
In addition to classic No 5, there’s also some civet in these favorites of mine: Le Labo Iris 39, Balenciaga Le Dix, and Balmain Jolie Madame. I also really like the scent of real ambergris, but that’s another animalic subject. “Floating Gold” is an excellent non-fiction book all about ambergris.
Jolie Madame was a favorite of my friend’s mom. What a gorgeous scent! I’m not sure I want to know what it smells like today..
Oh, reading all these comments was fun! I have ALSO had your experience of thinking: if this were dialed down a little (or a WHOLE LOT) it’d be amazing. Corpse flower (which I’ve smelled in DC at the botanical garden.) Dead skunk on the side of the road. Portia’s smelling the urinals (?) on a trip to India, honeyed from far away. I think about all this probably more than most folks. I wonder (for those of us who like it) if it’s the smell of the familiar? The smell of humans and humanity, that musky warmth somehow encoded in our lizard brains. Human Existence was just disgusting, not alluring. There’s another one I’m blanking on. For ME, it can be sweaty as all hell but I’m less fond of the really horsey/specifically barnyard ones, they don’t trip my trigger. I wore Miel de Bois the other day and thought of you. Introduced Carolyn to it and she thought it was GLORIOUS. If I use up this Scatamalis (and I will) I might spring for a bottle, but I really want Juste Filthy.
The smell of humanity…
Odd that no one has mentioned Mandy Aftel’s Memento Mori in regards to this topic. Maybe because it isn’t skanky.
I love it because it smells like a living body, maybe unwashed for a day. It’s comforting and mildly disquieting; like superimposing another person’s basic scent over your own. Top notes are butter, orris and floral notes (Phyenylacetic acid). The middle notes are Turkish rose and beta ionone, which imparts a woody violet effect. The base notes are ambreine (amber), ambergris, antique civet and patchoulyl acetate (patchouli isolate). The fragrance is composed in a special base of organic alcohol and fractionated coconut oil.
Anyone remember Vivienne Westwood’s Boudoir? It had the “dirty panty” (culottes sales) smell that was seemingly popular at the time (late 90s).
MKK never floated my boat. Too sweet and cuddly, like a scented teddy bear.
As far as animalic scents go, the one I tried recently and found to be not only extremely disappointing but short lived as well was Lush’s Lust. (Notes-a multi-layered fragrance made up of jasmine, ylang ylang, rose, vanilla and sandalwood) Neil Chapman absolutely raved about it, so I bought the smallest size (0.3 fl. oz) On me, the opening smelled like a cheap jasmine and went downhill from there. It was gone in about 30 minutes, too. Unusual for a indolic. I tried it a few more times, then passed it on to someone.
This confession will probably label me a pervert. I adore the smell of dried saliva on skin. If someone (Christopher Brosius?) could make that into a perfume, I would wear the Hell out of it.
Apologies for going off the skank topic.
No apologies necessary. I think it’s the sign of a good topic when it brings a lot of us out.
I never got around to trying Memento Mori. I think it came out at a rough time for me and a perfume with that name was a no. But now reading your description and the notes, I think I could seriously like it. I will find out.
You got me chuckling a bit about the smell of dried saliva on skin. I never noticed it had one.
Neither did I. Not I might need to..
I do remember Boudoir! I thought it was very cheeky. But a bit more of a stunt that a scent. Not as much as Secretions Magnafique, but then what is?
Hahaha that’s the one I literally deleted from my memory banks, what a manifestly terrible smell.
It is godawful. I remember once hanging out at the ELdO display counter at some NYC dept store with Gaia and just waiting for some unsuspecting suburban matron-in-training to give herself a liberal spritz.
But we decided it wasn’t worth having to smell it again so we went to Barneys
Oh, Memento Mori sounds amazing! I’m going to get a sample. Question 1 will be whether I can even smell it. LUSH’s Lust is TERRIBLE, and you’ve articulated it beautifully. Since I love those notes esp Jasmine I was fully prepared to love it, and nope.
Lust was just.. nothing. I couldn’t even work up hate for it. They could have more accurately named it “indifference”
An IDEAL re-name for Lush’s List, Tom. It was pathetic.
Ugh! I meant LUST, not LIST.
I understood, and thanks for the compliment!
Juste Filthy I am finding more and more wearable.
It’s funny how concentration can make or break whether a smell is lovely or “ew!”
Being raised in the 70-ies and 80-ies I was somehow used to the animalics of that time. Kouros was and still is (the ancient formulation) a beauty to me. MKK – gimme some more. Salome I can also pull off without problems…but then there are some newer perfumes that smell too much like horse stables to me: Bascule by Sarah Baker (now they changed the name to Riders) and Ruade by Parfum d’Empire. I’m still trying to figure out what makes it so extreme and unw/bearable for me and I think it’s the hay note mixed with oud and leather. Someone said it’s not the smell of horse stables but of goats and I could agree with that.
Oh Kouros! I remember there were people who loved it and those who swore up and down it smelled like dirty urinal cakes and truck stop bathrooms. Which made me ask myself “How would they know? Why are they hanging out in truck stop bathrooms?
I don’t know. I seem to be wanting my skank in leather perfumes these days. It’s amazing what birch tar, honey and apricot can do to a fragrance.
Well I am all over a good leather. I wish someone would bring back Kolnisch Juchten.
Do you remember when Sultan Pasha did the wildcat wee tincture to go under other fragrances Tom?
It was W I L D!
Portia xx
You know what? I think I missed that one. Too bad; I would’ve like to sniff it..
It’s all about the balance. I’m a fan girl of Liz Moores Papillon Artisan Perfumes but find Salome just too animalic. It’s the hyraceum in it.
MKK though I loved, I need it in my life again. The layering with Poison? Chef’s kiss!
Ubar I mourn. Deeply mourn.
I am also a big fan of Liz Moore. Salome is great on me. And now you have me curious about MKK and Poison, though usually layering doesn’t interest me.
I see they have them at Luckyscent. Wonder if they have them in the store itself..
It’s worth checking out. ALL Papillon perfumes are worth sniffing.
Well then I will have to check them out!
Salome is a skank fest, Anubis is a kyphi, another ancient smelling potion. Bengale Rouge is furry, Dryad a green, forest floor chypre, Epona is horse including the leather & stables & Hera is a magic golden haze.
Liz has never created a duff, even those that aren’t to my taste.
Oooh sounds good!
I seem to remember trying some of hers a while ago and liking them.
I agree totally!
I thought the combo was glorious! No one ever complained but I’m not an oversprayer
I think that really is the key. That and spraying it on your flesh and not your clothes. I hate seeing people do that in videos. Gives you no real idea what the scent actually smells like (on you) and is a sure way to gas people out.
oooh another one I need to look up. You see? Influencing!
I plan on trying both Juste Filthy and Scatamalis though if they are on me as they are on you, I’m out. As I’ve mentioned before natural civet and synthetic civet are not ever skanky or animalic on my skin. We’ll see,
I have just gotten a sample of MKK and went to read the reviews of it. They are all over the place with lots of sex, sweat, animal, manure, arse, poop, and on and on and on. I get none of that. On me it’s as one commenter wrote, “incredible, soft, warm, intimate, glorious”.
That’s exactly what I get and why I’ve used up four bottles over the years..
I can easily understand that! I have to start saving up now.
It’s weird that $320 doesn’t seem that unreasonable these days. Well, not completely unreasonable.
I agree. It’s amazing how our perspectives can change. I suspect corporations count on that.
I’ll bet. But I think they might find we are in some cases at the breaking point. For instance the idea of spending $1500 on a new iPhone is anathema to me. I don’t care if it folds.
They will all push too far very soon. Greed and hubris and the power that comes with it will make them do it.
And the disposability is what gets me. Bad enough that we are supposed to feel like we are inadequate for not having the newest phone but now they’re doing it with cars.
Hi, Tom & friends. I’m eager for people to have a candid discussion on “animalic,” “musk,” “skank,” etc. Now, animalic I picked up from Chanel’s Le Lion, which at times can smell like Google described so well, lol, when I asked it why Le Lion can smell like butt. ??
Said Google: “Specifically, the term ‘animalic’ in perfumery can refer to scents that evoke the natural odors of animals, sometimes including nuances that some might perceive as similar to bodily scents like those associated with the anal region. This is because some traditional animal-derived ingredients like civet (a secretion from the civet cat’s perineal glands) can have a strong, even fecal odor when undiluted. However, when diluted and expertly blended, civet can transform into a warm, musky, and even floral note that adds depth and sensuality to a perfume.”
That fecal scent in Le Lion can smell just like poop, but it’s usually a few seconds, and then it reverts to that elegant joy representative of a Chanel perfume. I believe what you said about No5 knowing Le Lion is similarly fearless.
But now I wonder as you discussed this fragrance’s stinkiness, what is stinky, skanky, animalic, and musky to the rest of you? And are you getting a shadow of it that lasts just seconds or do you like the prolonged stink? ; )
Look up Jospehine and deer musk on her walls, by the way, so adored by Napoleon, but that also Still Smelled at times decades later!
Well, I personally like stink to be somewhat prolonged, if not pronounced. I always think of musk as the warm, fuzzy one of the three. Like MKK or Kiehl’s. It’s funk, but for me it’s comforting funk. Civet is, I think, sharper. I think it gives that slight “slap in the face” that you found in older perfumes. Having smelled the real deal of both I have to say today’s artificial simulacrum are pretty good. For me skatone seems to be the most like a whiff of generic poop. But really more like fertilizer and soil. And all of them become flowery, even if they never lose that edge.
It’s interesting how there a fine line in scent how things can be wonderful in X concentration but JUSTTOOMUCH in Z molarity. I have told this one before but I always think of visiting the famous Corpse Flower at The Huntington somewhat after the apotheosis of its stinkitude. I thought “if the dialed this down a bit it would be really pretty.” It’s also the aspect of literal rot that I loved so much in JAR Fermez Tes Yeux.
I like stinky, and I like skank. But there are ones like ELdO Coney Island Corpse (or whatever) or Human Existence from the “Perfume: the Movie” coffret. Too much even for me..
On me Le Lion gets stuck on baby poop. Once I smelled that, it ruined Shalimar EdP for me too.
I have to admit that I have never smelled Le Lion. Which is stupid since there’s a Chanel right over on Rodeo within walking distance. I just am never there on weekdays and hate braving the tourists on weekends. And Chanel if I am not mistaken discourages decanters. (which I always thought stupid on so many levels..)
Discourages…. That’s one way to describe it
Its a way to do it without a “cease and desist” order, anyway.