You know that skin-tingling, witchcrafty way a fragrance can teleport you back to a crazily specific time and place? For an entire generation growing up in the 80s and 90s, The Body Shop’s White Musk is the ultimate time-travelling perfume: it’s the bottled scent of a John Hughes movie jam-packed with nostalgia and pent-up emotions. It’s just been relaunched for its 40th anniversary, but whilst a fragrance flashback can be a great thing, it can also be – as I recently found out – a very, very bad thing too.
Picture (or smell) the scene back in 1981: department stores are heaving with big, ballsy, shoulder-pad-power-perfumes with heaps of intense spices and rich florals from competitive designer brands, and there is barely anything for under 25s. Then along comes a little bottle of hope and ethical goodness that smells half like clean bedsheets and half like naked skin and an entire generation goes completely nuts. Like the dewy gleam of Rimmel’s Heather Shimmer lipstick, back then The Body Shop’s White Musk was the easy, breezy (and affordable) BFF that held your hand through angsty slow dances, playground bants and summer flings. The love it still strong: someone buys a product from the White Musk range somewhere in the world every 6 seconds.
White Musk Eau De Parfum, £22, The Body Shop
But what if it wasn’t your BFF at all? Last week I did a quick Stories poll on my Instagram to ask my fragrance-loving followers if White Musk was a nostalgic ‘Yes’, or a hands-down ‘No’. Almost a third came back as ‘No’.
These are the best perfumes for women of all time – we've tested more than 500, so we should knowGallery32 PhotosI completely understand why. First of all, there’s the word ‘musk’. If you never actually wore White Musk, just hearing the term can make some people literally recoil in horror and shut it down instantly. ‘Musk’ sounds so feral, sweaty and suffocating, like it’s the smell of an actual migraine (trust me it’s not!). And if you did wear it in your formative years, it might bring back some bloody awful memories instead of rose-tinted good ones. Messy snogs, clique rejection, mean girl jibes, crush regrets, complex hormones, bullying and worse – so many teen memories resurrected by perfume can remind you of a traumatic identity crisis at a time when the world was entirely un-woke and non-inclusive.
I can’t erase those memories, but I can try to convince you to give it a second chance. Will you hear me out?
It doesn’t smell of animals. Traditionally, yes, the ingredient ‘musk’ was obtained by scraping the genital glands of the musk deer, which (when dried, extracted and used in tiny doses) added an earthy, sweet and bite-me sensuality to perfumes. For obvious reasons it’s banned now and replaced by the synthetic alternative ‘white musk’ – which doesn’t have the animalic gritty undertones of traditional musk, but still gives perfumes a skin-hugging quality. And back in 1981, it was a major moment for OG beauty activists The Body Shop to shine a light on this ingredient as a stand against animal cruelty.
It is an iconic piece of scented artwork. The Body Shop’s White Musk smells like a puff of featherlight glittering talcum powder suspended in the air. It glows through your senses like your veins have been injected with reflective highlighter fluid. Honestly, it is phenomenal and I love how it’s been combined with crunchy-fresh springtime lily of the valley and morning-dew jasmine to evoke that feeling of flinging the windows open on a sunny weekend.
The best new perfumes to spritz heading into the next seasonGallery31 PhotosIt could spin your bad memories into positive healing. Some light-hearted pseudo-therapy here. We talked about how fragrance can whoosh you back to a specific time in your life: if this scent represents a bad moment, perhaps it’s a good thing to revisit and acknowledge that time? Look at you now and all you’ve achieved: you couldn’t have done that without the mistakes or lessons from the past. This scent might teleport you back to that lost soul you once were, to forgive the faults and bad snogs and evil bitch friends, and to remember all the mad fun and freedom that shaped you today.
It’s fragrance activism in one tiny spray. Wearing a £22 high street perfume is defying society’s systemic pressure to buy luxury and expensive scents. White Musk has always been vegan but now, on its 40th anniversary, it’s been officially certified by The Vegan Society. It’s had a sustainable makeover in a new bottle made from 42% recycled glass, which is entirely recyclable (including the removable pump). This is about sticking to your ethical morals by matching them with a fragrance made with the same beliefs and owned by a corporation (in this case, Natura & Co) that’s committed to positive economic, social and environmental impact.
It does strange and wonderful things to you. Because it smells like warm, post-shower skin and you will want to bite your own wrist.
It really does last for 24hours, and longer. I sprayed a blotter, my hoodie sleeve and my inner elbow the moment my press sample bottle arrived. The next morning, my skin still smelt faintly, and the blotter and hoodie smelt as intense as the day before. I have £250 colognes in my perfume collection that barely make it to lunchtime, so this is seriously impressive.
Have I convinced you? There’s more. As an added bonus to this 40th anniversary re-launch, there are three new ‘Elements’ in the White Musk family. These are little topcoat sprays (£10 each) that, when sprayed over the original White Musk, push it into a slightly different direction without altering it. Radical has biting greens, zippy citrus and soil-rich earthiness to enhance a grounding forest-floor botanical vibe. Lover adds a scattering of pink, blousy peony petals with a warm hug of spice. Free sends your White Musk up through the atmosphere, up where the air is clear, with crystalline and celestial sky-blue mineral notes. They’re a brilliant way to semi-bespoke your scent, and to broaden your fragrance wardrobe without bankrupting yourself.
The Body Shop, we salute you and your clever, creative ways of celebrating a long-lost perfume pal. Give it a go and don’t look back in anger: White Musk is the hopeful and ethical antidote to this overwhelming and high pressure year, just like it was once upon a time.
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