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jess.in.phillyin Welcome to the Club · Philadelphia ·

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Clean laundry fan from Philadelphia with a question

Hi all, I'm on the front desk of a dental office in Philadelphia, so my days smell of mint and latex gloves. Off work it's soft musk and anything close to clean laundry. My big question: why do some scents vanish from my wrist in what feels like minutes while others hang around all day?

Musk

7 comments

harriet.hay

Hello and welcome, jess.in.philly.

That's the question that gets most of us started. The light, quick molecules leave first and the heavy ones stay, and the Class on top, heart and base notes walks you through it.

joon.yuzu

Top notes are small and quick to evaporate. Wikipedia's page on perfume notes says base notes are usually noticed about 30 minutes after you put a scent on, and some musks can still be picked up after more than 24 hours. Citrus leaves first and musk leaves last.

jess.in.philly

So it's not my skin, it's the citrus. Weirdly comforting. Some perfumes do make my wrists go blotchy though, is that a musk thing?

harriet.hay

Blotchy wrists are one for a pharmacist, Jess: they can look at them and we can't. Here we stick to the smelling side.

ingrid_berlin

Musk is the bass line. You feel it more than you hear it, and after a while you stop noticing it is there.

jess.in.philly

Bass line, I love that. Reading the pyramid Class tonight, and I'll stop blaming my wrists.

priya.cardamom

Jess, this deserves its own Learning to Smell thread, so I'll start one there on which notes leave first. Bring your laundry musk.