Word: musk
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...only a few, and not enough of those. Citronella, civet, vetivert, santalol, ambergris, patchouli and a long list of other exotic products had to be imported from abroad, and they were still not arriving in France in anything like prewar quantities. Prices were staggering; a kilo (2.2 pounds) of musk is now 100,000 francs compared with 9,000 prewar...
...materials are coming in again and the big copper tanks and brown bottles are filled with tens of millions of francs worth of extracts, which white-robed girls dribble carefully into flacons. The real secret is to use more natural than synthetic musk. As Jeanpierre Guerlain explains: "Go into a Montmartre bar around midnight-the air reeks with synthetic musk. It smells of tarts. It takes real musk to make a woman smell like a lady...
Modern Hunt. Since the supply of musk has never met the demand, perfumers have always looked for substitutes. They discovered that many animals have musky-smelling lure glands. Beaver glands yield castor, which is widely used. So is loud-smelling civet. Perfume chemists once eyed skunks, encouraged by the fact that many people do not mind a distant skunk smell on a frosty morning. But the perfumers finally gave up on skunks: their scent is basically a defensive weapon rather than a sex lure. Muskrat glands, a cheap by-product of the fur trade, did work. The muskrat substance...
Most successful experimenter was Dr. Wallace Carothers of Du Pont. While trying to synthesize a silklike fiber, he stumbled upon a compound with a wonderful musky odor. Under the name of Astro-tone, it is widely used as a musk substitute. (Returning to bis original quest, Du Font's Carothers did women an even greater service by discovering nylon...
...nature intended the magic scent as something to drive females wild. If modern men could be convinced of this principle (as they were when Mohamed wrote of panting and of bliss) a great new market would boom the perfume industry. Chemists, to save the little male musk deer, would have to work harder and faster...