Musc Pallida opens beautifully, with rich animalic iris subtly flanked with fruits and flowers and quiet peppery woods. With time, the fruit pushes forward and it takes on a plum hue, which eventually becomes the focus. There's a point where a combination of prune, pepper, and smoke smell an awful lot like A-1 Steak Sauce (or possibly a plummy barbecue sauce), which made me smile at first but ended up getting on my nerves. Things fade from there, ending up as a smudge of fruity green leaves, somewhere between sour tamarind and thin, rosy geranium.
In all, I loved the intro, tolerated the quirky bbq sauce middle, and barely smell the thin drydown, so I'll average everything out with a neutral rating.
Beautiful iris musk. This is a sweet iris, not rooty; it's reminiscent of Eau d'Hiver except with a robust helping of smooth creamy musk in the base. I suspect this isn't selling well -- it wasn't even on display at the Hermes store I went to. Also, it was out of stock & and the SA told me that Cardamusc (definitely the inferior of the two) is outselling it. This is almost certainly because of the fact that, as a perfume oil, Musc Pallida takes at least 30 minutes to open up on the skin; this will not be an impulse buy for most people. (By contrast, the strident Cardamusc assaults you with a slug of cardamom right off the bat.) That's a shame, and I hope that Hermes does better to publicize this. Anyhow, this is well worth the price tag if you like iris or musk.