Musc Ravageur
Musc Ravageur found me on 22 March 2021 in Vilnius, Lithuania, Bernardinu 3.
When I first encountered this perfume, I had no idea how close we would become. I didn’t even like it. Today, Musc Ravageur is so much more than just a perfume.
This scent needed people, places and a story to exist. Musc Ravageur changed homes and travelled in different directions, capturing space and time within its notes.
The first direction was Vilnius - Birmingham.
On March 22, 2021, in the artist studio on Bernardinu st. 3, a man named Moze said: ‘I’ve got something very special for you. In the right time, this will be your perfume.’.
He reached his blazer’s pocket and pulled out a bright-orange perfume sample that said ‘Musc Ravageur’, Editions de Parfums by Frédéric Malle. When Moze just sprayed it on my hand, I said that it was not for me. It was powdery and reminded me of anise candy which I always hated. Moze asked if he could spray it on my hand, and after doing that, he asked me to smell the perfume and tell him what I saw.
An old-fashioned venue with high ceiling and heavy red velvet curtains, people dressed in suits and dresses, drinks, cigarettes and music. Everyone is a stranger but the atmosphere is very familiar.
After half an hour, Moze asked to repeat the same process and see whether the scenery has changed.
Evening, sunset, a lake. No people around, it’s warm and humid.
After listening to my story, Moze told me the backstage details about Musc Ravageur that explained the visual narrative I was experiencing.
After being introduced in 1999 (the year I was born) by Frédéric Malle and Maurice Roucel, it was rejected by the perfume industry. It was too loud, too explicit, too seductive, too much. Back then, people did not want to smell like that and the industry was not ready for such a strong, overwhelming scent. However, in a few years, people started showing interested after feeling more liberated and open to possibilities. People wanted to explore the sensual, intimate side of scents. According to Frédéric Malle himself, Musc Ravageur is one of the best perfumes he had ever produced; he also refers to the scent as ‘sex in a bottle’. Unconfined, but still very subtile, its projection is small enough to make the person want to be closer in order to smell it.
If only Moze knew how important this perfume has become.
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After coming back home that night, I couldn’t get it out of my head. I kept smelling my hand, noticing how Musc Ravageur is becoming an obsession, but I knew it wasn’t the right time for it. It needed to be dreamt of for some time and owned on a special day. I decided that such day will be my birthday, which was months away, and I waited.
On June 17, I went to Créme de la Créme for it. I haven’t seen Moze since I met him that day in March and I was hoping to see him, to let him know that he was right and to tell him how special Musc Ravageur is, how deeply I fell for it and how I am never going to tell anyone about it. But he wasn’t there.
After getting myself a 50ml bottle, I would only spray it when it was the right time. When I was being this version of myself who fell in love with this scent. When it was the evening before a Saturday night out. I would always remember Moze’s words: ‘When it’s the right time in your life, it will become yours. When you want to play with feelings and be a certain type of yourself, you will fall for it. It’s not for everyone, but it is for you.’.
A few months later, I came back to Créme de la Créme with a friend Pavel, and Moze was there. I thought he didn’t recognise me, he was being quiet and never asked me how I was. However, right before I left, he gave me another bright-orange sample of Musc Ravageur, saying ‘this is for your purse, so that you don’t have to carry the whole bottle on the weekends.’.
He knew.
It was September, which meant it was the time to leave my hometown Vilnius and travel to Birmingham, and Musc Ravageur traveled with me. I knew it wasn’t the right city for it. It was missing the right places, the right people, and the right version of myself. But I couldn’t just leave it. Avoiding the wrong associations, I would only spray it when I was in my accommodation room, and I would remember myself when I’m back home.This way of wearing Musc Ravageur would let me avoid creating new associations and would remind me of the past ones instead. I only had a very little amount of the perfume left, which was another reason of being so careful with it. The times that I would wear it would make me feel in a very certain way. It would help me travel without moving physically; as the scent interacted with my skin, it would remind me of the person I am when being back home. That person would dress differently, act differently, feel differently. Instead of feeling the need to adapt to the surrounding and show how perfectly well I have accomplished that, It would make me experience something I was missing within myself - home. The perfume would allow me to see the places I would go to when being back home and wearing it, especially Amadeus, my favourite bar.
My favourite bar with my favourite chandelier, the most beautiful and meaningful chandelier in my life that i’ve always loved, cherished and photographed. Amadeus has now closed down, but it will always remain a very special place to me.
Wearing Musc Ravageur always brings me there, to the warm summer evenings and nights, seeing my best friends, after months of being in different countries, drinking, seeing strangers and feeling happiness in the most simple, yet refined and unique way. The feeling, the air, the laughter, the taste, the birthdays, the breakups, the music, the pictures we took, the memories we made, everything was and still is very special about the times in Amadeus. I think, there, I was most myself.
I remember the day I found out Amadeus was closing and how sad that made me feel. Especially finding out from Birmingham and not being able to cherish the tradition and say goodbye, see all the people of amadeus together for the last time, dance and drink, make this sad memory and share it with everybody else. It felt like saying goodbye to a part of who I am, no matter how silly that might sound. It is much more than associating myself with a bar, and Amadeus wasn’t just a bar. It was time, place, people and so much more.
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It was also admiring the people I saw, smelling their perfumes, getting to know people I always wanted to meet and drinking with them, thinking about the flights, complaining, celebrating, falling for someone, getting heartbroken, getting over it, seeing my best friends for the first and last times between every flight, feeling sadness in a very kind way, feeling something I can never recreate, but can always remember and see, and smell.
I remember this night in Amadeus and the way it smelled. If I had to describe the notes, those would be as follows:
humid summer evening, primitivo and cigarettes for top notes; anticipation and proximity for heart notes; white shirt, musc, arriving taxis glances for the base notes.
That night was quite similar to regular nights in Amadeus, however, it felt even more intimate.
It started in the evening when the sky was pink and purple and I could still see people’s faces in the daylight. I was there with my best friend and we both felt very extatic for the night for no particular reason. We knew we were in the place where we always feel that way. We also knew that when it gets dark we will see more people and it won’t be just the two of us.
It was probably the night when I met most people. It felt like every sinlge person was a part of one company sat at one table. Throughout the whole night I could feel Musc Ravageur that I was wearing, and it wasn’t just me who sensed it. It was also the people I met, the ones who got close enough to me that night.
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The next destination where Musc Ravageur travelled was the city where it was born - Paris. There was very little left in the bottle, but it was preserved for an occasion, which felt different from when I bought it for my birthday exactly a year before that.
When it was 17 June, my birthday, it was also the last day I spent in Paris and the last drops of Musc Ravageur I used from that bottle. Being there and experiencing that smell felt differwent from wearing it in Vilnius, however, very similar at the same time.
1999 was the year Musc Ravageur and myself were born. Being in the city where it was composed and created and wearing it made me feel like yet another version of a person I can be.
A person who doesn’t need to adapt while being away from home, because there is no need to. Wearing Musc Ravageur didn’t require so much, which was the difference between wearing it in Vilnius and in Paris.
Rather than spraying it before going out late in the evening, it became a scent that would always be present, because Paris was already an occasion.Differently from Vilnius, I didn’t know what places I was going to visit and what people I was going to see, what kind of conversations are going to happen.
Wearing Musc Ravageur in Paris made me feel unconfined. There, I didn’t own anything, I wasn’t settled anywhere and I didn’t know anyone. I was fascinated by the places and people, going nowhere in particular felt purposeful. I didn’t feel the need to try hard or to become a new version of the same person who tries to find herself within those versions.
The elegance and strictness of bergamot felt discreet in a way that didn’t propose holding any emotions back. The intimacy of the proximity felt public - sitting in the cafes where tables are so close to each other, the distance between strangers shrinks and you use their lighter without asking. The erotic side of the musc is an interpretation of the way peoples’ eyes move and the way they use their hands when they eat. Passion in such a simple thing feels charismatic and intriguing, luring one in to observe and learn without touching.
After spraying the last drops of Musc Ravageur and remembering finally purchasing it on my birthday, exactly a year later I decided it was the right time and, most importantly, the right place to start owning a new bottle of the same perfume, a same scent that created so many stories and travelled to so many locations.
13 Rue des Francs Bourgeois was the destination for the day. The first Frédéric Malle boutique I’ve visited and the first time of smelling Musc Ravageur from a tester bottle after a year of wearing it.
June 17, 2022 marked the last and the first day of Musc Ravageur; the fascinating moment of keeping the bottled memories present by replacing the emty flacon with a new one. The one that is full of memories. Memories already made, memories that are going to be made, and some that were never made.
The last and the first day on defining placed with a scent and decomposing the notes when remembering the locations.
The last and the first day of endlessly searching for a feeling that the perfume gave me when I wore it in my favourite place that now only exists within the glass bottle.
The last and the first day living as me, not a version of me.
And there will always be the last and the first day of Musc Ravageur.
Interview with Moze
23/07/22
Vilnius, Lithuania
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- It’s been a year since you helped me discover Musc Ravageur. I’m not sure if you remember, but I didn’t like it at first, to be exact, I thought it wasn’t for me. After I bought it, throughout all these months, I wished I could tell you how wrong I was and how much this perfume means to me. It’s got so much to it, I could talk about it forever, but today I wanted to touch the topic I am currently examining - locations. I wanted to start with the place where Musc Ravageur found me.
- The studio?
- Yes, the artist studio where you, myself and Linas, the artist himself went that night after we all met each other for the first time in Créme de la Créme. Do you remember that night?
- I remember it, we had a conversation about smells and photographs, we also took photographs, those compositions. And we painted and drank.
- We did! And for a while, smelling that Musc Ravageur sample you gave me reminded me of that night and things we imagined. Things I imagined when you asked me to smell the perfume and tell you what I saw. That was an association for a long period of time.
- When did you buy the full bottle?
- I waited, I didn’t get it straight away, I got it a year later, on my birthday. Then I used it within a year and got a new bottle in Paris on the exact same day, on my birthday.
- Was that intentional?
- No, I just ran out of it by that time.
- And how did that feel, wearing it in Paris?
- I just think it’s so strange. When I created that narrative in my head after smelling Musc Ravageur for the first time, it didn’t have a particular location. The place, that old-fashioned fancy bar I imagined had no location, I didn’t know where it was. When I wore it in Vilnius, I always felt its presence that made me feel in a very certain way. In Paris, it felt very natural, like it was meant to be there. At the same time, it made me feel like I was meant to be there, somewhere I belong.
- That means it was the right place for it.
Although, when it’s you who wears it, there can’t be a wrong place for it. But I have a question for you. Where did you enjoy wearing it the most? Don’t rush with the answer, think about it.
- In Vilnius.
- And why is that? You said wearing it in Paris felt very natural.
- It did, but Musc Ravageur, for me, is not always about feeling feeling natural. The way I felt in Vilnius was sophisticated, refined, desired, undeveloped.
- Undeveloped?
- Yes. It felt like I was still looking for elements that complete the way I was feeling as a person, but that action of searching is the most important element itself.
- Where were you searching for it?
- In different places and people. I think it was the most exciting part of wearing it, and always will be.