Musc Outreblanc

Guerlain's Musc Outreblanc is a beautiful clean musk, a your-skin-but-better, clean-girl floral skin scent, which is to say that it sits close to the skin but instantly improves it. This is a very tender and delicate fragrance--it was sent to me in a very generously sized sample screw-top glass bottle by an extraordinarily kind Fragrantican--and it's perfectly lovely. I think it would be an ideal choice for people who work in environments where they are not supposed to wear fragrance--it's a good stealth fragrance insofar as you can wear it and feel clean and refined and elegant but only in your own tiny scent bubble. No one who isn't actively making out with you will be able to smell this, and if they do, they will just think you are a naturally sexy and beautiful-smelling person, not that you are wearing an expensive perfume (or any perfume at all, necessarily). It smells unisex--yes, there are florals, but they're florals that you can also find in many male-marketed perfumes. Here's an alternative possibility: I might just be anosmic to most of these musks. I suspect I am anosmic to many musks, so maybe this is a lot more obvious and "perfumey" than it seems to me. I must interact with my cat Labadie, who tends to respond favorably to my muskier frags. Update: Wearing (much) more liberally, I ask myself what this reminds me of, and it hits me: White Linen. But White Linen sticks around a lot longer because of the hefty dose of aldehydes. Here the whiter-than-white (outreblanc) musks seem creamier and more lactonic, less like crisp fabric and more like the kind of scent in a very subtle lotion that you might slather on a billionaire's baby. I think I might be anosmic to many of these musks, whereas no one on Earth is anosmic to White Linen. Just as it is difficult to describe the precise smell of aldehydes, it's difficult to describe the smell of certain musks--it's more like an intensification of a soapy-clean skin smell, more like the sensation of cleanness than a clean thing in itself. I read that we are exposed to so many musks from detergents and other household products--musks so persistent that they are not removed from our clothes when we wash them but are in fact dispersed into the environment, where they will allegedly linger for ages--that we have become sort of immune to them, in a way, and maybe that has happened to me, to some extent, because as much as I adore this perfume, with its exquisite heavy bottle and its undeniable air of supreme luxury, I really cannot smell it long enough to justify its cost. I do think it is ideal for a "your-skin-but-better" sort of fragrance lover. I would be so very, very bummed if I had spent hundreds of dollars for this, but I love having my little travel bottle from the kind Fragrantican, and I look forward to finding out who, if any, of my friends can discern this on skin after an hour.

Guerlain Does White Musk I get it, I get all the moans and groans about this fragrance. It's a white musk. We've all been there & done that. White musks are all over the place and are a dime a dozen. And at certain price thresholds it's so hard to justify the cost vs what is in the bottle. But what it smells like, Oh, this is so lovely indeed. It's a white musk done with a careful and delicate hand. It does not remind me of laundry detergent per se, it reminds me of clean fresh washed white linens on a line on a spring day in the hills, when the air is cool but the sun is warming up the day. It smells like the fragrance bubble that sits around a person who just bathed in a perfectly white bathroom with the window open, flowers on the shelf, and lots of white cotton towels. It's an idealized version of "clean" without being heavy handed about it. Practically speaking it's a lot of solidly compacted powder of white musk -- like the way a compact smells -- that is the base and structure of this perfume. On the top there is a bit of orange blossom, in the middle it warms up with ambrette, iris, and rose...all threaded through the solid block of compact powder. The dry down is a bit woodier, with a hint of sandalwood. This does not read "amber" to me at all. The nice this about this white musk is the way the individual notes will rise out of all that compacted musk powder--little projections of iris, rose, sandalwood, and orange blossom wrapped in clean bubbles of ambrette. I like wearing this a lot in the same way that I like wearing Prada Infusion d'Iris or Serge Lutens Clair de Musc. It makes me feel well put together, it will smell great if it's 90 degrees and humid or 20 degrees with a brittle wind. I appreciate Iris in any fragrance and this has a decent amount of it. I think this would have been better received if it was put in their regular line of scents and charged a more reasonable amount for it. I think that for $350 a bottle or whatever they are charging Musc Outreblanc will come off as a bit underwhelming. If you are spending that amount of cash on a scent you need to be VERY blown away by it (well for us regular folks, anyway.) It's a white musk and it's been done before. That said, if one REALLY loves the scent, it has very good performance and lasting power-- you only need 2 or 3 sprays to be good for most of the day. If you did shell out the money for a FB you'd have a very versatile fragrance that will probably last you years because you won't need to use that much. Price matters, you know. I have a bottle of Elizabeth Arden White Tea that I paid about $25 for, and I like it well enough. Musc Outreblanc is much better than the Elizabeth Arden, but $25 compared to $350 most people will just take the $25 perfume instead and call it a day.

Guerlain Musc Outreblanc... A Vanilla Lover’s Unexpected Love Affair with Musk! I am not a musk person. Or at least I didn’t think I was. My fragrance comfort zone has always been warm, enveloping vanilla scents. Some of my absolute favorites from this house are Guerlain Vanilla Planifolia 21, Guerlain Angelique Noire, Tobacco Honey, and Guerlain Spiritueuse Double Vanille. Those are the fragrances that feel like “home” to me. So when I was at the boutique at the Waldorf and several people insisted that Guerlain Musc Outreblanc was phenomenal, I was skeptical. Musk and I historically don’t get along because I often find musks cold, sterile, or a little too “laundry detergent.” Still, curiosity won and I purchased the large bottle. At first, I didn’t think I wanted to reach for it. And yet... I kept reaching for it. Throughout the day I would catch little soft wafts of myself and think, what smells so beautiful? It’s delicate but addictive. The real magic happens in the dry down. What begins as a clean, airy musk slowly warms into something incredibly soft and comforting.It’s not cold the way people often describe musk.It becomes warm, skin like, and quietly luxurious. Another moment that really sold me...in the evening I walked back into the room where I had sprayed it earlier in the day. The scent was still lingering in the air. soft, elegant, and calming. It genuinely made me happy. What makes this fragrance special is that it doesn’t smell “expensive” in an obvious, flashy way. Instead, it smells perfectly composed. The ingredients feel seamless, like they’ve been blended with incredible precision. Everyone raves about Initio Musk Therapy, and I do own and enjoy it. But Musc Outreblanc feels like a completely different level of sophistication. Where Musk Therapy is modern and bright, this feels refined, almost old world. It gives me a kind of classic New York luxury vibe and is understated, polished, and timeless. For someone who thought she only loved vanilla, this fragrance has been a beautiful surprise. Sometimes the scents you think aren’t for you end up being the ones you fall in love with.

It's really too bad that I go nose-blind to these musks so quickly, because this perfume is absolutely amazing, and the longevity on fabric is absolutely INSANE. I know this because I dribbled some Musc Outreblanc on a handkerchief (I have a small travel bottle that doesn't have an atomizer--it was a generous gift from a Fragrantican, and I treasure it) four days ago, put the handkerchief in an apron pocket, and then forgot about it until this afternoon when I put on the apron and asked myself, "What the HELL is that beautiful iris smell? What the hell even IS that?" I was doing laundry at the time and harbored the brief hope that my Tide laundry detergent was giving Guerlain suddenly, but no, I quickly realized that it was the handkerchief onto which I had dribbled some Musc Outreblanc. It's a pity that I can't appreciate it more when it's on my skin; I don't think it disappears, and I'm sure it could be perceived by anyone who got close enough to me, certainly by my geriatric choxie, who likely hates all perfumes, musky or otherwise, but I wear perfume mostly for myself, and I don't really want to wear a perfume that doesn't give me a reliable scent bubble that I can perceive myself throughout the wear of the perfume. But I love this so much, and I love being surprised by these delirious iris whiffs of pure clean floral luxury, so I think I'm going to make it my handkerchief perfume. It smells like the world's most extravagant laundry detergent, made for the world's richest and most richly indulged baby. I like to carry this scent around to distract myself from the stench of the world. Musc Outreblanc, whiter than white, beyond white, au delà de blanc, the sublime blankness of end paper, a white for the end of time.

I enjoy musc fragrances in general and this is one of my favourites. I tried it out on a tester and initially gagged at what smelt like an ambroxan bomb assaulting my nose. Walked away from the counter with the test strip in hand thinking this was a hard pass. However after a few minutes I smelt the test strip again and it had settled into what I would describe as a beautiful milky floral scent. I do not get musc in the Narcisco Rodriguez kind of vibe, this is extremely clean and ethereal. Note that I do not generally enjoy lactonic scents and didn’t enjoy Blanche bete which goes too heavy on the milk for me. However this frag is done just right and exquisitely blended. I promptly returned to the counter and requested she spray me again but on skin. Hours after I got home I could still smell this fragrance and it is addictive. I bought a full bottle at duty free a few weeks later. I agree with other reviewers that you can become nose blind to this while wearing it, but others can still smell it. My nail tech told me I smelt amazing and wanted to know what fragrance I was wearing. I showed her the bottle on my phone and did mention it was a bit expensive. Next time I visited her I brought a mini vial for her to keep and use of the perfume given she said she liked it so much. Needless to say I now get excellent service at my nail salon, so this perfume has served me well... This is a milky, delicate floral and refined musc that smells like you are expensive and classy AF. Love it