Dew Musk

The opening is a weird mix of ylang ylang and orange blossom. The thickness and rich body of ylang ylang makes this almost hard to inhale, but orange blossom gives this almost metallic and sharp edge lingering in the background. Nevertheless it is all about ylang ylang, very feminine, very rich and very natural smelling. The heart part adds loads of musk, and by loads I do really mean loads - it's all over the place, still ylang ylang is extremely strong and sweet, but musk adds this nose-itch-inducing mess which finally leads me to understand all the dislikes for this fragrance. It just seems too much, it's too heady and too strong, clearly not a crowd pleaser and should be applied in very small doses as the silage is maximum and even with a little dab the whole room is filled. It does get better at the drydown where musk is settled and calmed down, I did expect a bit of patchouli, but it never appeared for me. In conclusion I must say that this is NOT BAD. Hard to enjoy this though, it has a bit of oldschool feel to it. Try this if you are a massive ylang ylang fan!

I'm on a mission to finish testing the rest of the Montale perfumes in my sample vial queue. Why not begin with a scent apparently hated by many? Dew Musk is musky, no doubt, so no surprise there. It also smells like Montale--by which I mean: strong woody quality smacking of oud or reasonable facsimile. The flowers are not very salient in this composition, at least not to my nose. (Perhaps the people who find this to be a floral perfume are anosmic to musk???) To me it seems more masculine because of the woody-oudiness. I realize that oud is not listed in the note hierarchy, but this just screams out Montale, especially in the drydown. I might have guessed that my sample was a fake, given how different my reaction is to from that of other reviewers. I have a manufacturer-prepared sample (or so it seems!), in a vial clearly marked "Montale", which came in a cute little shiny black Montale-emblazoned box. I cannot imagine that anyone would go to such trouble to produce a fake sample! I don't think that Dew Musk is bad at all, but it's only appropriate for musk lovers, to state the obvious...

It actually reminds me of Divine by Divine. The first whiff is very strong, it hits me on head with the very heady scent of honeyed white flowers. Then the orange and pomegranate lead you to the powdery musky finish. The fruity notes aren't sweet at all, they're rather bitter I can say. A tiny sweetness is detectable in the drydown due to the ylang-ylang I suppose. Truly I didn't enjoy the first 20 minutes, but the drydown is very enjoyable, even comfortable. Despite of being an oriental scent the musk note here is not warm, no, on the contrary, I feel it cold. And I have to warn one again, if you are a person who prefers your scents to be girlish or sugary, forget about Dewmusk.

Not sure how to describe this one. It's very... nostalgically woolly? It smells like a winter closet full of wool coats and sweaters, sprayed with old-time perfumes from the last season. Does not fit into categories of clean laundry musk, floral-musk (e.g. Narciso Rodriguez For Her) or labdanum-musk (e.g. Musc Ravageur) etc. Something about it reminds of CHANEL Coco EDP and JHAG Lady Vengeance. As previous reviewers mentioned, this smells dated and seemingly belong to the classic perfumery family. Very interesting with great lasting power.

There's nothing really dewy or musky about this one. It reminds me of heavy '80s perfumes, like White Diamonds amped to the max with some lily tossed in. Come to think of it, Dew Musk smells identical to the way wealthy women's feet smell (I used to work in a shoe store). For some reason this perfume reminds me of the elegant, edgy women in the movie The Spirit (2008).