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cleolinda · 9 months

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Angel (Mugler, 1992)

(The Secrets Behind Thierry Mugler’s Iconic Angel Ad Campaigns: Jerry Hall, Amy Wesson, Anna Maria Cseh, Bianca Balti, Naomi Watts, Eva Mendes)

I had wanted to write about Mugler's Angel (1992) for a while now. I hadn't tried it before, but I love gourmands, after all, and Angel is a groundbreaking one. My mom briefly smelled a sample of it and wanted a bottle for Christmas one year (the same year that she gave me Hypnotic Poison), so I am actually working with a full bottle, never opened, maybe two years old; not a decant that came to me on a hot mail truck. Ideal testing conditions.

I can't smell the gourmand part.

I think that maybe this particular bottle is cursed. You see, the reason it's never been opened is that my mom came down with covid shortly after I bought it, and she's had anosmia ever since. Yeah: for more than two and a half years now, she has been, she is still, unable to taste or smell anything. But she really, really wanted me to review Angel, so it's in my possession now.

Here in the writeups I've done, there have been notes I haven't been able to smell now and then, but I haven't had coronovirus anosmia per se. I've dealt with long covid flare-ups, yes, but no olfactory issues. So I tried Angel five or six times over two weeks, giving my nose time to reset in between. I wrestled with it. On me, it opens with a blast of particularly melon-y fruit, and then, within minutes, the Werewolf Patchouli, The Funk, comes out. Angel is famously the first "fruitchouli," so I knew that would be involved, but—if I thought the harsh patchouli that bursts out of Coco Mademoiselle (2001) was incongruous, well, Angel is clearly where Chanel got the idea from. But before we go any further, let me walk you through some of the official description:

Angel is the fragrance of a woman who dares to live up her dreams with her blue star as her guide. Confident and seductive, she fascinates those who cross her path. Between power and pleasure, she uses her ultra-femininity as a signature. Between heaven and earth, she makes her dreams a reality. Angel Eau de Parfum is the first Gourmand perfume in the world of fragrance.

POINTS:

Angel is technically not the first "gourmand" ("foodie," "edible dessert") fragrance. So long as perfumers have had vanilla, almond, cinnamon, anise, citrus oils, synthetic fruit notes, and so on, they've been able to create gourmand compositions. Sylvaine Delacourte cites Guerlain's early vanilla-heavy Shalimar (1925), for example, as well as L'Heure Bleue (1912), "with its marshmallow accord based on orange blossom and vanilla." Now, I've worn L'Heure Bleue several times and I've never gotten marshmallow from it, but the point is, you can create a gourmand aspect from traditional notes. Most reviewers and historians refer to Angel as the first modern gourmand: the one that shaped the genre as we know it today. As Delacourte says, "Without Shalimar, there would not have been the perfume Angel (1992) which was the first to have officially been declared as gourmand with its patchouli, red fruits and caramel accord. Angel became the leader of this new wave of gourmand perfumes, followed by Lolita Lempicka and many others." But more on that in a bit.

I've been thinking about the way I write about gender—"for men" and "for women"—in fragrance, and at most, I said that the patchouli in Coco Mademoiselle had a "masc" expression, so to speak. But both the Mugler site and other reviewers speak in terms of the traditional gender binary, so let's engage with that. Mugler (the brand) persistently emphasizes the femininity of the product, and it turns out that there's a reason for that.

But first, more from Mugler.com on the fragrance notes:

Angel Eau de Parfum combines the power of patchouli with the sensuality of notes of praline, red fruits and vanilla absolute. Celestial Facet: Calabrian Bergamot. The smell of the wind, the sky, the great outdoors, the infinite: Calabrian bergamot stings the senses like a breath of fresh air. Delicious Facet: Praline. The universal addiction to the Gourmand family: associated with red fruits, the sweet scents reminiscent of praline and caramel create an irresistible desire, thanks to the unprecedented use of Ethylmaltol in fine perfumery - a stroke of olfactory genius. Voluptuous Facet: Patchouli. Evocation of sensuality and ultra femininity: Warmed up by the oriental inflections of vanilla absolute and played in overdose, patchouli captivates, seduces: the quintessence of femininity.

There's our game-changer: ethyl maltol.

Invented in 1969 and six times more powerful than maltol (which is found naturally in cocoa), this component evokes the scents of ripe fruit or caramel. Before the advent of gourmand perfume, this molecule was only used in the food sector. Today, veltol [Pfizer's maltol product] is present in almost all gourmand recipes of fragrances. Combined with natural ingredients, it brings a delicious sweet touch with caramel and praline accents.

(That Carrément Belle article also touches on furaneol in gourmands, "a natural organic component found in strawberries and many other fruits" with "roasted sugar tones," used in perfume to represent candy or cooked fruit aspects. I'm guessing there is a significant dollop of this in Aquolina's Pink Sugar, but that's our next post.)

The Cut goes so far as to say that "Thierry Mugler Changed the Perfume World Forever"—Angel took about three years of concerted advertising to really take off, but it became a direct contrast to the ubiquitously clean CK One (Calvin Klein, 1994). In 2007, Angel joined the Fragrance Foundation Hall of Fame, and it's still a benchmark—a popular one—today. And while The Cut credits Angel with laying the groundwork for Bath & Body Works' Warm Vanilla Sugar, various Victoria's Secret fragrances, Rihanna's Fenty perfumes, and Kilian's Love, Don't Be Shy, that's entirely leaving out gourmands and/or fruitchoulis like (deep breath) Lolita Lempicka (1997), Coco Mademoiselle (2001), the entire Britney Spears fragrance empire (est. 2004), Pink Sugar (2004), Vera Wang's Princess (2006), the Prada Candy line (2011), Lancôme's La Vie Est Belle (2012), YSL's Black Opium (2014), Viktor & Rolf's Bonbon (2014), Ariana Grande's Cloud (2018), and every single sugary thing in between. Angel was the fragrance that said, sugar in perfume is now a thing and we're gonna put a fuckload of it into this bad boy—

"I want something mouthwatering and tasty which reminds me of childhood," Mugler allegedly said, wanting to recapture his memory of visiting French fairgrounds. “The scent of a fairground, candy floss, little cakes, chocolates, and caramels.” Perfumers Olivier Cresp and Yves de Chirin listened by throwing nearly every sugary ingredient into the formula: cotton candy, coconut, cassis, melon, jasmine, bergamot, pineapple, mandarin orange, honey, red berries, blackberry, plum, apricot, peach, jasmine, orchid, caraway, nutmeg, rose, lily of the valley, patchouli, chocolate, caramel, vanilla, tonka bean, amber, musk, and sandalwood.

—and we're gonna do whatever we gotta do to make that work.

And what Olivier Cresp and Yves de Chirin had to do to make that work, to balance the sweet elements of the fragrance in a way no one even worries about nowadays, was throw in a massive blast of patchouli. To wit:

Now Smell This: "What shocked me, mostly, was the patchouli, or more specifically, the 'unusually high 30 percent concentration of woodsy patchouli' that had been added to keep the fragrance from being overly sweet."

A Tea-Scented Library: "This stuff is earthy; dark; rough-textured; herbal-smoky like a cigarette (which, by the way, I loathe) and heavily mentholated, which makes it feel chemical and quite masculine. A definitely non-angelic, angry beast, roaring and screeching from the tiniest spray… and from the nozzle."

Tania Sanchez: "Look for Angel’s Adam’s apple: a handsome, resinous, woody patchouli, straight out of the pipes-and-leather-slippers realm of men’s fragrance… The effect kills the possibility of cloying sweetness, despite megadoses of the cotton-candy smell of ethylmaltol."

And this, I think, is why the Mugler website copy stresses femininity so relentlessly: the angel doth protest too much. A harsh, earthy patchouli that haunts me around the house doesn't read as "ultra feminine" to me, but that's on me and my preconceptions. (It is definitely on me; I cannot wash it off.) That said (and sometimes I have to refresh myself on this point), Gender Is Fake Except For the Parts You Like; anyone can wear anything they want, so it doesn't matter if Angel is deemed "feminine" or "masculine." But if we engage with the terms of the conversation that is already happening: the current Mugler website is addressing reactions that characterize the patchouli blast as "masculine," reframing and re-gendering that note as just another way to present femininity. (And clearly, I had no problem envisioning something like this when I said a similar patchouli felt like a werewolf debutante.) Basically, they're saying, "Angel's gender is 'woman' because we say so. Wear it and see what patchouli femininity feels like." In terms of gender discourse, I am way too far in over my head already, so I'll leave it at this: sometimes reviewers say masculine, Mugler says feminine, I say it's a synthesis of both or maybe neither; maybe perfumes, like angels, don't actually have gender.

Unfortunately, Angel is not for the femme in me. You see, I'm not much of a patchouli fan, but it's the only thing I can smell with this one after about three minutes. My first impression of Angel, every single time, is FROOT, led by melon, and then an absolute tsunami of patchouli crashes in. Once, once, I got a whiff of something I would call "white-chocolate praline cupcake" if I sniffed my arm real hard, and then I lost it again. And I know I can smell ethyl maltol! This is not a Javanol situation! I have worn Pink Sugar (and Fantasy, and Princess, and Cloud, not to mention a whole collection of Black Phoenix gourmands) several times, and I can smell dessert notes. I have no idea what's happening with this bottle of Angel. I cannot test this perfume anymore. Every time I try a single spray on my arm, my clothes smell like patchouli, my bed smells like patchouli, my room smells like patchouli, the vanity smells like patchouli, the hallway smells like patchouli. It stalks the house, just the patchouli, only the patchouli, smoky-hoarse and yet also belting out show tunes to the balconies. We've already been through my Fragrance Journey™ to learn to like this stuff even a little, and for me, it depends on what it's blended with. IT'S NOT BLENDED WITH ANYTHING ELSE, IT BREAKS FREE AND RAMPAGES FOR DAYS ON END, IT CONTAMINATES EVERYTHING I HAVE EVER OWNED IN THIS LIFE OR ANY OTHER NO MATTER HOW MUCH LAUNDRY I DO. If I were also getting haunted by all this cotton candy and praline and chocolate, I would like that! BUT I'M NOT.

Bonus hilarity: My mom hates patchouli.

So we're sending the bottle on to someone who loves The Funk; I'm going to order a fresh decant of Angel to see if it smells different coming from someone else's stock, and we'll see if the recipient of the Cursed Bottle gets to roll in her beloved patchouli, or if it somehow only smells like candy to her, cursèd as it is.

Bonus: If you're not familiar, Thierry Mugler (1948-2022) was one of the great weird avant-garde couture designers. I need to add more posts to my tag (don't miss... whatever's going on here). But for now, bask in the video (note: some strobing/flashing) he costumed for George Michael:

youtube

Perfume discussion masterpost

#perfume #perfume discussion #long post #perfume: mugler #note: patchouli #note: ethyl maltol #the genders #video #music

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