Mugler Angel twenty-five: Why we love the cult flavor
The great and awesome scent of angel, the olfactory bomb, the tool of mass destruction of sugar and patchouli, this autumn has been twenty-five years old. On this occasion, we decided to recall the history of the strange perfume superhite and find out why it is so important, if not for everyone, then for many fans of fragrances.
In 1992, Thierry Mugler, king of latex and space fashion, presented his first fragrance. He was all redundant, as is customary in Mugler: both the bitter-sweet blue liquid in a disintegrated crystal bottle, and the catchy name Angel, and the advertisement on which smiling Estelle Lefeburere, standing on the ledge of the New York skyscraper, released into the sky a gas scarf embroidered the stars. Perfume columnist The Non-Blonde, citing NY Magazine, writes that during the shooting Estelle came much closer to the edge of the ledge than the guards had originally authorized. Mugler personally shot the campaign, so it must be assumed that this was his request. What for? Because fuck you that's why: Mugler always worked with overlap, so that everyone was scared.
"At that moment, I naively thought that a woman should smell like flowers or candy; Angel combined both of them, but had the same attitude to a sweet flower smell, so much a Marshmallow man from Ghostbusters - to a harmless marshmallow on a stick ", - writes in his" Perfume Guide "perfume critic Luca Turin. According to the brand’s press release, Olivier Cresp’s perfumer took about four hundred and sixty attempts to get Thierry Mugler to approve the scent. Cresp himself says that the key to the formula was a conversation with Mugler, during which they discussed their childhood memories and sweets that they ate in childhood: bread with chocolate paste, cocoa, praline. “At that time, there was no gourmet flavor at all,” Cresp said in an interview with Wonderzine. “There were flavors with strong fruit notes, but there was nothing so sweet on the market. In the past, I added a praline chord to the aromas, but for the first time I used this ingredient in such quantities. And the plan that was the initial impulse, the gourmet aspect did not include at all - but Vera Strubi, the then president of Thierry Mugler Parfums, was looking for something completely new, and I am very glad that I managed to anticipate a big trend " .
Perfume chemist and columnist Fragrantica, the author of the Leopold Cat Hyperboloid Facebook group Matvey Yudov says: "Angel is a fragrance that largely changed the landscape of modern perfumery. In fact, it is the progenitor of the gourmet genre, the first composition that includes ethyl maltol - the material having a caramel smell. Numerous fruitchuli („fruit patchouli“) are direct descendants of this aroma, and even the vast majority of modern mass female aromas have a fruit-floral-musky-gourmet profile and are related nicknames "Angel." For me, this fragrance house Mugler earned almost unlimited credit of trust, and I must say, I have never yet did not give reason to change your mind. "
The British perfume blogger I Scent You A Day, not without wit, calls Angel a “marmite from perfume”, referring to a paste from recycled Marmite yeast, which is usually usually either adored or hated. With its loudness and uncompromisingness, Angel stands out from the perfumery landscape even now, when there are smells of almost everything on the market - from human discharges to burnt rubber. At the same time, at the beginning of the 90s, Angel did not accept the strangeness at first. "Much has been said about the artistic qualities of the Angel: how exactly the confectionery sweetness and bitterness of patchouli are balanced in it, what strong feelings it evokes, how unusual it looks - just imagine that until 1992 it never occurred to anyone to paint perfume liquid in blue , - says Ksenia Golovanova, perfumery critic and author of the telegram-channel Nose Republic. - But even the business story here is amazing: Angel, contrary to popular belief, did not immediately become a bestseller - in the first dozen it began to appear only three years later stroke, and before that he was given a lie down on the shelves, hoping for the future success of today is already difficult to imagine:. If the odor does not indicate good numbers in the first few months, it is likely that it was quickly sent into oblivion. "
For twenty-five years, the original Angel, according to Cresp, was not reformulated one iota. But the flavor has twenty-five flankers, that is, versions - sweeter and less languid, with and without flowers, candied on the very neck and almost bloodless. They were made by different perfumers; Cresp believes that both the users and the original flavor benefit from a variety of options. "The vision of other perfumers is always interesting, and the flankers not only adapt the original to the modern perfumery style, but also bring new ideas," says the author of the fragrance. "I am glad that the line provides such diversity. It gives the opportunity to enter the Angel universe even to those who for example, it’s just afraid of foodies: there are more fruity and less sweet versions among the flankers, and I would recommend starting with them if you don’t want to smell like a pastry shop. "
However, this fear is not justified in the case of the original. “The modern“ dessert ”compositions with overdose of the same ethyl maltol are no match,” explains Lyubov Berlyanskaya, art director of the Brocard brand, author of the Evaluatrix telegram channel. “It's not just the smell of cake, but something more: complex sweet, cosmic Armor, conceptual perfumery, a tough and always recognizable olfactory design that cannot be confused with anything.Angel is already a classic, the ancestor of the olfactory family most popular today, and yes, it is one that has no analogues. a repulsive and attracting plume. "
Photo:Mugler
