In 1992, Jōvan was still coasting on revenue generated by its landmark sponsorship of the Rolling Stones' Tattoo You Tour, with old faithfuls Musk and Musk for Men comprising the flagship line, and Jōvan Sex Appeal fleshing out the brand portfolio. Founder Barry Shipp, a former Revlon rep turned entrepreneur, had repurchased Jōvan from Beecham in 1988 and renamed it Quintessence, which led to the eventual re-enlistment of Murray Moscona to create the White Musk range. If you were alive and sentient in 1992, as I was, you remember smelling White Musk everywhere. It's one of the biggest fragrances of the decade, right up there with CK One, L'Eau d'Issey, and Acqua di Giò, yet it's almost never mentioned, as if the world has forgotten it. Let's remember it.
I should point out that the White Musk of '92 was a different animal from the White Musk of today. I first smelled it in high school, and my sensitive teenage nose was almost offended by the sheer potency of the stuff. It opened with a blast of aldehydes and sour citrus, with a sort of coriander-martini-onion off-note that flashed and was gone. Then came an intense fruit salad of apples and melons atop a salty, aqueous white musk accord that smelled deep, fuzzy, fatty — Egyptian musk, translated by Jōvan. I didn't hate it, but it was a bit intense and musky for me. I revisited it in college, and it hadn't changed much, except that by then it reminded me of the '90s. I hadn't smelled it in years since, but I'd read that subsequent reformulations were dilutions of the original, and a light went on: maybe the cleaner, cheaper formula of White Musk for Men is wearable now.
Indeed it is. The fragrance still opens with that familiar blast of soapy noise, but it's toned way, way down. No more onion off-note. There are gentle rustlings of green apple, and much less melon, with just enough sweetness to temper the apple's sourness. After a while, the recognizable Jōvan white musk accord wells up, smelling just as musky but not nearly as salty; the fuzzy texture of the white musk now resembles a baby cotton ball more than a sable rug. White Musk is there, and then it's not. Then it's there again. It has a way of receding to a suggestion of a skin scent — with anosmia accounting for the stretches in which it's barely detectable — but it pops back up out of nowhere once or twice an hour and briefly reminds me that I'm wearing something. Longevity is good — musk fragrances are composed of massive molecules that last forever, and the molecules here last no fewer than ten hours — but projection is, like, three, four inches? Listen, this stuff smells better than the entire Zoologist range, so I'm not complaining.