I first heard about Abdul Kareem Egyptian Musk oil on the fantastic Make Up Alley fragrance board – rest in peace. The posters there were a wealth of knowledge and when I was looking for a clean simple musk, this one was recommended.
A little research dug up something kind of cool – Abdul Kareem Egyptian Musk was the signature scent of Carolyn Bessette Kennedy. I say cool because at the time, while loving Carolyn and her style was something many obsessed over, finding information on her loves and favs required some online sleuthing. It wasn’t like it is today, and if you know, you know.
Knowing what we do today about Carolyn’s style and aesthetic, knowing she wore a simple scent like this makes sense. Her clean elegant yet no-frills vibe would suit this scent perfectly. And seeing how much I love a skin scent, I knew I’d love AK Egyptian Musk too.
At the time I bought this first, sometime in 2009 or 2010, Abdul Kareem Egyptian Musk had one official seller. They were on Amazon and eBay and three bottles later, I couldn’t find it anymore. It is truly a magical musk, but it does have what all Egyptian musks have, which is a clean skin scent that is not sweet or dirty. It’s a simple seventies musk, no muss, no fuss, with no extra anything.
We know that she ended up working with her good friend Narciso Rodriguez, who also designed her gorgeous wedding dress. It seems fairly obvious that she was his muse, and one sniff of his Narciso Rodriguez For Her (2003) perfume will confirm it. In fact, on one of the biggest perfume databases online, almost four thousand votes say the same thing.
NR For Her is probably the best simple elegant musk perfume still on the market and I’m never without it.
I prefer the eau de toilette, that’s in the black bottle. It’s airy, clean and elegant, always perfect – the Chanel N°5 of musk perfumes if you will. The pink bottle, the eau de parfum, is also beautiful. And years ago, NR did release it as an oil. Maybe if we pray hard enough he will bless us with it again.
One thing that needs more investigation – in my humble opinion – is Sarah Jessica Parker’s first perfume. If you were alive, loved celeb gossip & old enough in the nineties, you know SJP dated JKR Jr. While today she looks back on those days as “the Kennedy fiasco”, the gossip at the time was that she wanted marry a Kennedy. She was a NYC gal and John-John was thee man about NYC, it sounds like a match made in heaven by Carrie, does it not? I wonder if it bothers her that there are no paparazzi photos of them together.
When I smell SJP’s perfume Lovely (2005), and hear her perfume story, which she based on a “street perfume musk oil”, I’m certainly struck by how much it smells exactly like NR For Her. Do we think this needs to be looked into?
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