Mugler
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
The first spray is an assault—cotton candy so intense it's nearly suffocating, backed by a jammy fruit cocktail where melon and red berries jostle for dominance. Coconut adds a creamy, sun-oil quality that feels oddly tropical against the fairground sweetness, whilst bergamot attempts (and largely fails) to cut through the sugary haze.
As the initial sugar rush subsides, darker elements crawl forward: chocolate that's more cocoa powder than Cadbury, caramel with burnt edges, and honey that's gone slightly fermented. The patchouli becomes impossible to ignore now, its earthy, slightly medicinal character creating a bizarre but compelling tension with the gourmand notes, like eating chocolate truffles in a head shop.
What remains is surprisingly powdery—tonka bean and vanilla melding into that distinctive Angel skin scent, still sweet but now tempered by amber warmth and persistent patchouli. The woods peek through finally, sandalwood adding a creamy counterpoint, whilst musk anchors the whole affair to something resembling wearability, though subtlety was never the point.
Angel is the fragrance that split the perfume world in two when it arrived in 1992—a garish, unapologetic explosion of cotton candy patchouli that made perfumers reassess everything they thought they knew about composition. Olivier Cresp's creation is built on a fascinating contradiction: fairground spun sugar colliding with earthy, almost dirty patchouli, the kind that smells of damp forest floors and incense shops. The opening is a cacophony—that synthetic cotton candy accord, so sweet it's almost painful, wrestles with jammy red fruits and a peculiar melon-coconut combination that shouldn't work but somehow does. As the chaos settles, chocolate and caramel emerge, not as mere sweetness but as darkly roasted, almost burnt notes that prevent the composition from tipping into pure confection. The patchouli grows more insistent, its camphoraceous quality threading through the gourmand elements like smoke through syrup. This is worn by women who enjoy being divisive, who understand that polarising reactions are far more interesting than polite approval. It's for evenings when subtlety would be a waste, for those who want their presence announced before they enter a room. The tonka and vanilla in the base add a powdery, almost talc-like quality that feels strangely vintage despite the modernity of the gourmand approach. Angel doesn't ask for your affection—it demands your attention, and whether you love or loathe it, you'll certainly remember it.
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3.6/5 (33.9k)