Muscs Koublaï Khän (1998)
by Serge Lutens Les Salons du Palais Royal Shiseido

I have to say that after reading some of the reviews, I was intrigued but also a little intimidated by MKK. But after wearing this regularly for the last 2 months MKK is without doubt my favorite fragrance.

I have to agree with floatingpoint, those who think this smells like groin, or homeless person drenched in rosewater are letting their imaginations run wild (but purple prose like that makes for interesting reading). Yes its dirty, yes its animalic, after all this is a musk perfume that contains castoreum and civet. But it is so much more. What starts off as a smoky and animalic soon (20-30 mins) settles into a rich, deep musk lifted by rose and beeswax notes. The extreme dry down (7-8 hours after application) introduces notes of leather and salt into the mix.

One would think that a perfume like this wouldn't play well with others, but it layers surprisingly well, especially when worn with Duro. It also works well with lighter fragrances like Acqua de Biella that use a musk base note; a dab of MKK adds complexity and depth without masking the lighter fragrance altogether.

Balls-to-the-wall musk in a bed of cumin and flowers. Does it actually smell like groin? I don't think so. I think people are letting their imaginations get the better of them. Any man whose testicles smell this good should be awarded the Legion of Honor. It doesn't smell like armpit, either. What it does smell like is musk, of very high quality, and lots of it. I like to spray it on when I walk out the door with just a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, and bed head. Magnificent stuff.

Type the words Serge Lutens Muscs Koublai Khan into Google and you'll wind up with a deluge of hyperbole: "shocking and erotic", "raw, dirty and sensual", "musk, salt, armpit and leather, in that order", and my favorite piece of ridiculousness: "the aftermath of bodies intertwined in coitus".

Uh-huh. Right.

People, please -- can we have some perspective when it comes to talking about a frickin' perfume? One of the reviewers said she let her fourteen year old daughter smell Muscs Koublai Khan and the girl said that it smelled kind of pretty, like incense, which is a far more perceptive and honest statement than all the noise about skank, sweat and armpits her mother was raving on about.

I've been in a lot of locker rooms, played baseball, football, soccer and basketball with a lot of sweaty guys, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that there's nothing about Muscs Koublai Khan that smells remotely like a rank armpit or a sweat soaked guy, and I have this suspicion that some women (and some gay men) who review this perfume engage willingly in a kind of mass Harlequin Romance delusion about how men smell when they sweat.

Really, we don't smell anything like Muscs Koublai Khan when we sweat. If we did, we wouldn't need Muscs Koublai Khan, and need it we do if we desire to smell at all dashing or charming when standing at a doorway, a bunch of flowers clutched in one hand and a finger pressing the doorbell.

Muscs Koublai Khan is, instead, exactly how the level-headed fourteen year old girl described it -- a little sweet, a little smoky incense and kind of pretty (albeit underscored with a warm, rich synthetic musk for lots of depth). The rest of the twisted-knickers crowd twittering their skanky fantasies over Musc Koublai Khan reminds me of the same sort of reactions that get twittered over Caron's Yatagan -- since it doesn't smell like a powder-puff, the more, erm, delicate souls among us succumb to the vapors and immediately start hallucinating fecal matter and men's sweaty armpits.

Believe me, how they jump from a bottle of rather nice, lightly floral and smoothly musky cologne to writhing coitus, sweaty balls and "every secretion ever extracted from a mammalian backside all rolled into one" reveals far more about them than it does about Muscs Koublai Khan.

ref:
http://www.nathanbranch.com/2008/06/musc-koublai-khan-by-serge-lut.html

This is for men, not for women. It smells masculine, not in the sense that it uses notes for men, such as leather and tobacco, but that it smells like a man. First there is a burst of powder, and then a sweet cumin note of perspiration, and then a warm enveloping musk--the aroma of a man's clean groin. On a man, it's perfectly nice, but on a woman? It's too butch for me. The musk is perfectly naturalistic, neither too strong nor too dirty. (Ava Luxe Rasa Extreme was dirtier.) To me, the fecal notes are balanced and "aired-out" by the musk. Overall, I would choose something sweeter, more vanillic, and without the cumin. So, I'm giving it a neutral from my own viewpoint, as to whether I would wear it, personally. I have never smelled this on a man, but I would rate it positive in that situation.

This review is under revision.

First wearing was a little off putting, it smelled sweaty, heavy, animalic, and slightly sweet. The second wearing was SO much better. No more sweaty and heavy smell, just a nice animalic, yet still slightly sweet fragrance that made my mind wander to thoughts about the aftermath of bodies intertwined in coitus. A very erotic and seductive fragrance from SL. I wish it was easier to access it here in the US.