There’s not so much in there that the perfume would smell gross, as anyone who owns it could attest. That’s not to say you’d like the perfume.
I have more than ten years of experience working with musks, and know how to walk the line; to recognize the sweet spots with different substances.
Some people have a sensitivity to civet, almost like an allergy. That’s what I’m talking about moreso than the smell. There wouldn’t have to be a smell for those people to have a reaction. You could be one of those people. If so, I’d stay away from it.
But a little knowledge can be dangerous. For example a lot of people rave about how bad they hate patchouli, and yet the vast majority of those same people love perfumes that contain it, considering how many do. Patchouli is one of the most common fixatives. I think at one time most all perfumes contained civet as well, as a fixative. Even fake civet smells gross in raw form. The untrained nose usually can’t detect it. They extract it without killing the animal, BTW.
But very few people really accept that the most aversive smells, in their proper context, are typically the most attractive and alluring. It’s ironic, and just hard to wrap your head around, unless you’ve experienced the effect a number ot times, in different ways.
As a perfumer, the worse something stinks like ass or other bodily phenomena in its raw form, the more you will like it, as a general rule. You are going to use something at 1/1000 concentration, or something like that. Bodily smells are almost unfailingly rated as people’s favorites.
The irony goes even deeper; in that, not only do people like those scents the best, they also characterize those scents as “fresh smelling”! Light musk is the smell of fresh laundry, for example, or of your significant other just out of the shower. When you smell “fresh” air out in the country, part of what makes the air smell fresh are the faint smells of skunks and other animals. Those smells are also what make you inhale more deeply, which is of course good for you.