Bal Musque

Well, I have to say the fragrance 'blurb' is near enough hysterical but that aside, this fragrance actually works for me and wow it smells rather mmmmmm.....difficult to describe....something like ' a warm cuddly fuzzy cashmere scarf that has been left near the woodburner after a boozy night'. How's that for a 'blurb' eh?! Seriously, it smells amazing on me but I think I am just lucky.

Once upon a time, there was a small, inexperienced girl taking her very first steps into an unknown, scented world. She grew up in the fabulous 1980s, in a modest family where desserts rarely came out of the oven and perfume was not part of everyday life. Her mother didn’t bake sweets and didn’t wear fragrance, and perhaps for that very reason, two things would later become deeply loved by that little girl as she grew up: sweets and perfumes. Her little nose didn’t grow up in refined or sophisticated surroundings, yet she clearly remembers elegant ladies encountered along the way, wrapped in unmistakable trails of Opium, Poison, and Giorgio Beverly Hills. Those powerful scents felt almost magical, telling stories of confident, luminous women who seemed just out of reach. Then, one day, just like in a fairy tale, cane the encounter. Its name was Ball à Musc by Nez à Nez. It wasn’t a loud, dramatic love at first sight, but a quiet, profound revelation. In that moment, everything became clear: there were four notes she truly loved. Licorice, cherry, cinnamon, and benzoin. Sweetness, warmth, spice, and resin weaving together like a spell, wrapping the wearer in a comforting yet sensual embrace. Ball à Musc is not a fragrance that shouts; it whispers stories. It smells of comfort and desire, of childhood and adulthood intertwined. Like a forgotten candy found in a pocket, rediscovered by chance, capable of taking you back in time while making you feel, at last, at home. In this olfactory fairy tale, Ball à Musc is both a destination and a beginning: a reminder that you don’t have to be born into a golden world to recognize beauty. Sometimes, all it takes is one encounter, beloved notes, and a heart ready to listen.

It's a strange perfum... My first sensation was - oops! I don't smell anything...then I sniffed again and again and I underestood - it smelt like my own skin...The scent continued to change - it was like a rubber, some resin of the trees, leather. I had a sensation that the tempeature was rising... And after many hours I felt a lot of vanilla, but some kind of dark vanilla. It was there even next day... Somewhy it reminded me the atmosphere of film "Eyes Wide Shut" - mystic..

I think that Bal Musqué is a quite fancy scent. It takes me to a viennese ballroom in the baroque period. Opulent musk, decatent spices and amorous vanilla with playful licorice. Found it a bit too heavy at first but I could not stop sniffing my wrist while pictures from the film "Amadeus" sprang to my mind. To me BM is a voluminous stupendous perfum for voluptuous evenings but defenitely to strong for office, business or casual events.

Recently tried a few samples of this because I am trying to find a few other perfumes or fragrances to wear other than my usual "limited" repertoire-smile. I was really looking forward to trying this fragrance because I imagined it might be a similar but more affordable alternative to my beloved Frederic Malle Musc Ravageur, my current favorite scent! This fragrance is alriight but not one I would own and wear on any regular basis. As others have stated, I liked the opening notes very much because the scent is predominantly musk (which I like a lot when layered with other fragrances) with a nice layer of spice (cinnamon?). Based on reviews, I was expecting this fragrance to be overwhelmingly and forever musk-y and very strong at that...but it was none of that...at least not on me. About 20 minutes after applying this fragrance, it turned into what I would consider a slightly floral, very muted, muddy, murky, subdued and rather powdery substance, losing nearly all of the initial pleasant musk & spicy opening notes. What started out with a promise quickly took a rather mediocre and unoriginal turn...at least on me it did. Much to my disappointment, this scent morphed into a real gourmand fragrance on me...after about an hour or so, I thought I smelled like strong vanilla extract. Lasting power was not great...silage was rather average. As I am learning more about fragrances, I am recognizing that I like rather potent mixtures with strong opening notes, animalic scents...not floral scents, NOT POWDERY scents. I like spicy & smoky fragrances with complex notes that are predominantly musky, woody and spicy. I like the wood, spice and musk characteristics to persist and last as final notes, too (not fade away). A fragrance has to have great staying power for me to love it...unique & unforgettable silage is a huge plus, too! Bal Musque is an okay fragrance but it just didn't quite do it for me.

A message to Nez a Nez: STOP IT. STOP IT NOW. QUIT THE CRAPPY FAUX-ETRY AND FIX YOUR LOUSY PERFUMES OR SHUT UP. I am now absolutely convinced that these people make bad juice with inferior materials and write pretentious garbage to avoid confronting the problem. If you paid $7 for a bottle of this at Walmart you'd complain about the poor quality. Instead this is $150 for about the same quality except it's far more fey. What the hell is "chartreuse vanilla"? A "consenting waltz"? "Fawn amber"? I think these terms can briefly be translated as a bottle of Love's Baby Soft spilled in the 1975 Camaro of a chain smoker who loves those cherry-scented Rolling Stones tongue air fresheners. I'm not sure whether the technical term for this stuff would be fetid or miasmal but either makes more sense than "the epistolatory rebirth of a feline". Maybe I could work for them. How does "the magenta overture of destiny's thunderous canary" sound? Does it fit right in? Sillage: 2-3 ft, enough to weaken your enemies Persistence: interminable Fabulosity: a glass of maple syrup Price to value ratio: dreadful -9/10 (yes, that's negative)

Oh... i just had to write my opinion on this one! Couldn't help it! Well.. let's start of the fact that i really dislike it! I had to try it after reading so many reviews here and the name is so mysterious... So i got a big decant and tried it a few times and each and every time i got the same result: At the first 15 minutes i just can't smell anything!! I can smell that i sprayed some kind of perfume but i just can't smell it or detect any note or what i'm smelling here!! Sooo weird! I never had this kind of experience with any other fragrance before.. I saw that another member here left a review saying she also can't smell anything and that only after a while this fragrance opens on her skin to some kind of vanilla scent.. well, i couldn't understand what she was talking about untill i tried it by myself, and got the same result!! It's really not a special fragrance and very weird on my skin... I would never buy it and would not recommend to purchase it blindly. It's not a score at all....

The opening of BAL MUSQUE, from the house of Nez à Nez, is surprisingly nice, with a declarative licorice note buttressed by an appealing complex of woods and a touch of leather. I like it a lot. Within minutes, the house base becomes stronger and stronger to the point where, by the drydown, I am unable to distinguish this particular perfume from the drydowns of some of the other perfumes of this house. As I am not a fan of this base, my initial optimism about BAL MUSQUE proved to be false. I was hoping that this creation might be the exception to the rule, the one perfume from this house to deserve my further investigation, but alas, the base won out again. Obviously, compatibility with and taste for a house base differs a lot from person to person. Those who like some of the other Nez à Nez creations may well appreciate this one as well. If the opening lasted more than a couple of minutes, I would have been ready to sign on for a full bottle, but for whatever reason, I simply do not like the somewhat gunky vanilla base.

I agree with Cloyd, the pretentiousness of this company is through the ROOF. I feel embarrassed reading their descriptions. It is like a bad SNL skit. Bal Musque opens all spicy and musky...then settles down fairly quickly into something soft and powdery that smells EXACTLY like something I wore from the drugstore in the late 70s or early 80s in elementary school or junior high and I can't figure out what it is. I don't mean kinda-sorta, I mean it smells PRECISELY like something I wore. I wish I could figure it out...it is driving me crazy. Anyway, whatever it was was cheap because that is all I wore back then. I feel that if I am mistaking this outrageously priced musk with something I got at Walgreens or from Avon then something is clearly wrong with this picture. EDIT: After wearing this for several hours, I figured out what is smells like...Je Reviens by Worth. If you like the finished dry down of this, you can pick up a mini of Je Reviens for about $4. Both actually smell really nice.

I feel a little unconfortable with Nez a Nez official descriptions, because if you read the lines above, which are written on the box too, you envision incredibly complex and sultry scents and then found yourself with a much simpler one. This is the case of Bal Musque`. Don't get me wrong, it is a very nice-smelling perfume and quite longlasting. It is indeed musk. A soft lovely feminine slightly soapy powdery musk with some vanilla (dark?) and lots of liquorice that strongly reminds of Lolita Lempicka. Animal here is very tamed and refined unless, as the lines say, it is a chameleon-like composition which turns a sweet, cosy domestic white Persian cat in a wild untamed black panther. It didn't happen on my skin. Either my skin tamed the beast down or the beast has simply run away to the wilds.

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha I read the pretentious description - really cheered me up. Passionate and consenting Waltz - really? What's passionate about 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, probably the least passionate of ballroom dances. I'm not even sure how we went from waltzing to hanging out in the animal kingdom with cats?

Lo amoooooo..il mio profumo preferito..è sexy, caldo, cipriato...il top!