I’ve always been a great fan and a connoisseuse of fragrances. I’m still sometimes using the “Event Horizon” perfume my second ex-husband paid the famous Bwww Grrrr Mwwwwrrggh to create for our wedding, ah, sweet memories… So naturally, as soon as I arrived in 2019 Massachusets, I started looking for the popular fragrances people are using here.
Macy’s is the closest department store to where I live now. I remembered the name from the 19th and early 20th century American literature, and I thought it was some old-fashioned department store in New York. Turned out, it became a chain of department stores since then, evolving over time, and the one next to my home has definitely no 19th-century vibes. Anyway, I checked it for perfumes. Perfumes were there, perfumes were pretty expensive (yup, one of the objectives of my mission in the 21st century New England is living at a typical middle-class housewife budget, so I have to count my expenses as the real Americans do). However, they were selling a set of perfume samplers in a bag, and the price of trying 10 fragrances and getting a small clutch was pretty appealing.
So there were ten tiny vials, almost all of them EDPs — and the first striking discovery I made on the 21st century Earth was Thierry Mugler’s Angel. Why, oh why does this scent of the equatorial jungle, of the humid, dangerous, wild jungle where lust and moral degradation reign — why does this scent bear this Angel-ic name?
Because really, for me it’s the exact scent of lust. This perfume shouts about passionate and messy sexual intercourse in the tropical forests with these distinct putrid notes because so much tropical fruit lies squashed on the ground in this sultry air… What’s so angelic about that?
And yet, and yet… The odor is too captivating. There are these unpleasant notes; still, it’s not entirely repugnant to the “get a shower ASAP” point. Instead, you would keep checking the scent on your wrists, you can’t believe that they would actually make a scent that putrid and animalistic, so you have to recheck, again and again. So while it’s not a perfume that has “ME” written all over it, it is definitely a peculiar and original thing worth all my time.
But the surprises wouldn’t be over yet. In just a couple of hours, there’s no trace of composted leaves and fermented fruit. What is left in their place is an aroma of sugar powder, so elegant and discreetly noble. It’s just a hint of sweetness, extremely light as if sugar powder was added in minuscule quantities — enough to decorate the entrée while not adding any excess sweetness. This laconism is what appeals to me most of all, it’s the same terseness that is synonymous with the words “elegance” and “exquisite taste.”
And this elegant terseness is absolutely, violently different from the Jungle Of Carnal Pleasures Angel offered initially. So how they are doing it? What did Monsieur Mugler put in there to achieve those striking effects? I’m not surprised at all that Earth press calls Angel EDP a unique fragrance, a game-changer, and all those other poetic phrases.
Do I need a full-sized bottle? Not now, for sure, it’s too peculiar for me. I have enough in the sampler vial, anyway. But if I come to building a real collection of Earth perfumes at some point, this one deserves its place there.