The Musc – Calice Becker

Essential Parfums
Release Date – 2018

Top Notes

Heart Notes

Base Notes

Musk
Beeswax

Lavender
Sandalwood

Ginger

The Musc by Calice Becker is a curious little fragrance. I first came across it via a 2ml sample vial that arrived free with a larger order, so my expectations were, frankly, quite low.

I sprayed it onto the back of my hand, as I always do, and then waited for the scent to come to me. Knowing the dangers of the immediate nose-to-wrist approach, I gave the alcohol a few minutes to settle and sat back expectantly.

First Impressions

After a few moments, a gentle spice began to rise from my wrist. Not in the typical sharp and peppery sense you might associate with cardamom or black pepper, but a softer type of zing that had been warmed and rounded by something else.

For context, I always try to sample fragrances completely blind if I can. I prefer not to know the notes or read reviews beforehand; it makes the first impression feel more honest and less influenced by what I think I’m supposed to smell.

What I knew almost immediately, however, was that I had happened upon a corker.

Warm Laundry & Bubble Bath

As I brought my hand closer to my nose, the scent shifted into something unexpectedly familiar: laundry. Warm, crackly laundry that faintly stings the nose when you bury your face in it too readily from the tumbledryer. Still warm and wrapped in heat and static.

This sense of cleanliness soon shifted into a new mental image. The figurative pile of warm laundry slowly morphed into a freshly run bubble bath, teeming with hot froth and sparkling foam.

If I had to compare its “feel” to something, I would say it’s Replica’s Bubble Bath’s older sister. It has all the notes of a freshie, but the addition of ginger adds an invigorating edge that wakes the scent enough to take it from sleepy to piquant.

I can see it working in almost any season, though perhaps autumn suits it best. The ginger gives it a warmth that would feel particularly at home in cooler air.

I do find that the spice from the ginger occasionally leans slightly masculine, sometimes even bordering on aftershave territory. But perhaps that says more about my own scent associations than the fragrance itself.

We’re often taught, whether consciously or not, that spice belongs to masculine fragrances and sweetness belongs to feminine ones, when in reality scent rarely behaves so neatly. If anything, this fragrance is a good reminder that those categories are mostly marketing decisions rather than olfactory truths.

Beeswax (The Divisive Part)

One note I was surprised to see listed later, when I finally looked up the composition, was beeswax. This was my first real encounter with beeswax in fragrance, and hopefully not my last.

Honey in perfume often leans sugary and bright, sometimes almost sharp in its sweetness. Beeswax, however, is a different creature entirely. It still carries a sweetness, but it feels far more natural. It presents slightly animalic and warm, with a soft, skin-like quality that settles into a comforting, musty “funk”.

Not dirty exactly, but not entirely clean either.

This seems to be the part of the fragrance that divides people. In various reviews, I saw people describe it as smelling like bad breath, and one person even said it smelled like the skin of someone you don’t like – which raised more questions than it answered, not least why you are close enough to someone you don’t like to be familiar with the smell of their skin.

Thankfully, my skin chemistry was a little more forgiving, and on me the whole thing settled into something warm, soft, and addictive.

Where Everything Comes Together

The middle notes of lavender and sandalwood marry together beautifully, with the lavender feeding directly into my bubble bath fantasy, turning the foam into something distinctly herbal – think Radox after a long and emotionally taxing Tuesday.

The musk and sandalwood act as mediators, tying everything together and grounding the headiness of the lavender and ginger. Without them, the fragrance might drift off into something a bit too airy and aromatic, but instead, The Musc stays close to the skin, warm and fuzzy.

There’s something very enveloping about the way the components move and shift together. It reminds me of sitting in a car with sun-warmed leather seats, the windows down, driving slowly past a meadow in late summer where flora and fauna are drifting through the air. It’s warm, clean, herbal and sweet in an understated way.

The moment a perfume makes me feel calm, warm, or vaguely “homey”, it immediately goes onto the very dangerous “full bottle” list. So naturally, this one shot straight to the top.

The Plot Twist

I then did what any rational person would do and ordered a full bottle online, spent several days refreshing my Gmail for updates and poring over reviews, only for it to arrive and smell absolutely nothing like the sample I had fallen in love with.

This all happened a few months ago, and I revisited the bottle again only last week. Unfortunately, it is still nowhere near the depth and warmth of the sample.

Thank God I am aware of maceration as a process; otherwise, that bottle would now be languishing somewhere in the depths of my local tip.

Unless, of course, we are in the far more sinister territory of fakes, in which case this has been a rather expensive exercise in optimism.

So, Would I Buy It Again?

Although my bottle is in a somewhat transformative stage, I remain optimistic that it will eventually develop into what the sample once was.

Having just inspected it, I can confirm the liquid is slowly turning a reassuring shade of yellow, which in perfume terms usually means it is “growing up”. The beeswax is already starting to come through more strongly, just as it did in the sample, so for now, we live in hope.

As lovely as the fragrance is, I’m not entirely sure I would repurchase once this bottle is finished. For me, this feels more like a novelty fragrance than a signature one. Something I’m very happy to own, very happy to wear, but not necessarily something I need to replace immediately.

I will happily savour this bottle while I have it, but I suspect that by the time I reach the final few drops, I will already have set my sights on something else – something perhaps a little more impactful in terms of performance and presence.

All in all, though, I’m going to give this a very respectable seven and a half sniffs out of ten.