Matsu Musk is a speculative scent created in response to growing symbiotic processes between fungi and humans. It features notes of mushroom gills and skin. Agar Olfactory is based in Chicago and is a project in speculative olfaction by Agustine Zegers. It imagines climate disaster and apocalyptic scenarios and the type of smell landscapes that would exist in such events.
From their website: Year 2077: Humans have begun incorporating mycelium into their routines, diets, architectural structures, and medicinal systems in exponential ways. the increasingly abundant quantity of fungi in human bodies begins to create a communal bodily emanation uncannily similar to mushrooms. in the warm crevice of an armpit, you find a fruiting body. Matsu Musk is a perfume.
Odd Critic: Next we travel to 2077, where mycelium has become intertwined with human life after many decades of incorporating fungi into societal structures. Our skin is bouncy and pale due to copious amounts of chitin. Matsu Musk is a fairly linear fragrance, combining photorealistic mushroom with the mildness of human flesh. The vision here is not fairycore-plant mother-trippy-egirl-mushroom-emojis, but rather a stock photo of a button mushroom. It’s an earthy raw mushroom, freshly sprouted out of a lush green garden. Just enough soil remains caked on during the photoshoot to maintain its authenticity, but not enough to repel prospective mushroom enjoyers. Upon the first smell test, I thought of the Fungal Wastes in Hollow Knight, a whimsical landscape of purple fungi. I was totally wrong though, because on the dry down the modesty pointed towards creamy whites and velvety beiges. Don’t get me wrong, whimsy plays a huge role in this fragrance, however there’s a forbidding undertone—it’s like throwing a Kylie Jenner-level party for someone in a vegetative state. Layers of thin fleshy gills swallow our bodies, the membranes actively breaking down organic matter into carbon. Just a week ago, it was only one sprout protruding from your belly button, but now you and the mushroom have become one. You don’t freak out though, because you were prepared for this. It’s meditative, inhaling and exhaling slowly to the rhythm of the superstructure you are now attached to. It’s really quite beautiful—a wave of calm washing over me as I let this potion dry down. Matsu Musk is perfect for adding more verdancy to a stinky floral. I tried layering with Imaginary Authors’ Fox in the Flowerbed, the result being a tangle of fungi resting among a bed of heady jasmine.
