Thierry Mugler's Angel: Les Parfums de Cuir

There are those who despise Thierry Mugler's wildly successful Angel so much that they appraise its many flankers solely by their ability to mitigate that contempt. Others - I'm one of them - look forward to each successive October, when the best of these special flankers are typically released, not as another opportunity to hate the fragrance more or less, but as another form of Christmas, where Angel will be slightly reinvented, seen through yet another conceptual prism.

This year, the flankers to Angel, Alien, A*Men, and Womanity, collectively called Les Parfums de Cuir, are truly gifts that keep giving. There are many things to admire about the Mugler line, not least of which is its packaging, a big part of its gifts to give. With the exception of Womanity, arguably a misstep in the direction of excessive ornamentation, the bottles have been endlessly entertaining, if not exactly practical - interesting not just as vessels but as objets d'art. Unlike most flankers, and despite the expectations imposed on these new fragrances by detractors of the original fragrances, those produced by Mugler don't seem too preoccupied with "improvement". Again, with the exception of Womanity, which has not quite been the hot cake that Angel and Alien have been, there's nothing, from a sales point of view, to improve. These aren't apologias.

With Mugler, a flanker often brings the best of both worlds - a wonderful new fragrance not too terribly removed from the one you love, reenacting the crush all over again. The Liqueur versions from 2009 were my favorites so far. For me, Angel Liqueur is even better than the original, while Alien is a deeper, richer more of same, forcing me to look at the Alien I fell in love with in a different way. A*Men Pure Coffee was fantastic, and Pure Malt was beyond that, and the only real bummer for me has been Pure Havane, which smelled on me a little too much like death by vinyl, side of maraschino cherry.

There are Mugler fragrances I practically ignore, like most of the summertime flankers, all of them single-mindedly bent on balancing toothpaste with caramel, and while I admired last year's Taste of Fragrance editions, I never felt, no matter how hard I tried, that I neeeeeded them. The whole Innocent range seems superfluous to me, unless you simply must have a Mugler and can't stomach anything more interesting the line has to offer. But those Liqueur versions. Those were really something - so good that each September I start thinking obsessively about what the brand will come up with next.

I'm not as crazy about the leather Angel as I am about her liqueur kin, but I don't like it too much less. Certainly enough to buy it. If it's good enough to bring the guys at Peredepierre out of semi-retirement, you know it must be pretty decent. Peredepierre described an apricot quality to leather Angel that puts it somewhere near Daim Blond. I do get peach, but not with anything like the brightness of that Lutens suede. This is definitely leather for me, not suede, dark brown in color, and the sweetness of most Angel versions, including the original, is tempered here. Liqueur Angel smells recognizably of Angel throughout. Leather Angel doesn't always or often remind me of any Angel I've smelled. If I had to find a correlate I would look to Cuir de Lancome or Heeley Cuir Pleine Fleur. Leather Angel, unlike Cuir Pleine Fleur, isn't quite barnyard-adjacent, but not so far away the wind doesn't catch up with it. As for Cuir de Lancome, what I think it shares with leather Angel is a rich, creamy leather feel, with none of the arch sharpness involved in, say, Knize Ten or Chanel Cuir de Russie.

It's most recognizable as "Angel" up top. Once it dries down to the leather, which is not skanky but plush (more leather bag or seat than saddle), it becomes something almost entirely new for me. The marketing says these flankers were marinated in leather. I can't answer to that, though I find it hard to believe. Still, smelling leather Angel, this is an apt image, and as far as PR talk goes, I'll take this kind of snake oil over the stuff Dior's writing, bottling, and peddling any day. Leather Angel, like the other two "feminines", is housed in a great bottle, which is housed in a great little leather bag, which is all kind of the icing on the cake for what turns out to be a refreshingly gratifying fragrance. By dry down, you have, for once, or a change, a contemporary mainstream fragrance which not only promises but delivers the leather, with a punch. This is truly a successful conceptual exercise, wrapping Angel in layers of rich leather, and the measure of that success is how good it smells.

This Week at the Perfume Counter

I've resisted writing this for over a week now because I know it's going to upset some of you. I told a friend over the phone a few nights ago and, hearing her reaction, I was glad we were separated by several states. Listen, I'm always going to TJ Max and Marshalls. I drop in at least once a month, sometimes (okay, usually) more. Most of the time I find nothing, nothing being your Polo Sport, your Giorgio Red, your Ralph Lauren Hot, Rocks, et al. I leave empty handed more than I'd like, and sometimes the thought of leaving empty handed bums me out so much that I grab one of said nothing specials. Believe me: what I'm about to tell you is a rarity for me too.

Last time I casually ambled into Marshalls, I found Armani Prive Cuir Amethyste. This retails for a pretty penny, as you might know. At Marshalls, it was less than thirty bucks. Luca Turin detests Cuir Amethyste--or is it Tania Sanchez--or does it matter? If one disagreed with the other, the dissenting opinion would have been logged under its contradiction. The Guide calls Cuir Amethyste a mess. I think it's pretty great. It aspires to the violet leather territory occupied by Balmain's Jolie Madame and provides, I think, an interesting contrast to that fragrance's more old fashioned approach. The violet is creamier, the leather more sheer, closer to the Lancome Cuir reformulation than the heavier-handed leathers of yester-year. A steep price tag is almost always mediated by good longevity to me, and Cuir Amethyste sticks around quite a while. I could smell it hours later.

Naturally, once I knew that one Marshalls had an Armani Prive, I was obligated to drive all over town. How would I sleep that night, otherwise? What if there had been other bottles in other stores? How would I ever sleep again, wondering what might have been? I visited four TJ Max and Marshalls locations and realized very quickly that some sort of major drop must have occurred recently. There was so much product I hadn't seen before. I'd love to tell you just what, but I was in a fugue state, and now only Calvin Klein Secret Obsession comes to mind. It won't make you any happier to learn that I did find another Armani Prive, perhaps the best, according to many. Hidden among the other, bigger boxes was a bottle of Bois d'Encens. I'd smelled it at Nordstrom months before, and might have even sprayed some on. I remembered liking it, but at upwards of several hundred dollars for 1.7 ounces, I'm more apt to dismiss alleged greatness than collapse in helpless ecstasy. What's the point?

Bois D'Encens is indeed fantastic. For under thirty bucks I'll spend all the time in the world allowing myself to fall in love with a great fragrance, and Bois d'Encens rewards the adoration. It goes on sharp and, like Amethyste, sheer. Even sheerer, really, a penetrating incense which feels like something burning up at higher altitudes, at some mountain monastery where the air is thin and brisk and makes all the monks a little giddy and ditzy. This sets it apart from every other incense I've smelled, including the ultra popular Comme des Garçons series, which locate in lower altitude houses of worship. I would say Bois d'Encens is more of an outdoor scent overall, smelling somehow of clean air. This impression only intensifies as time goes on, reinforced, if anything, by the emergence of an interesting, equally sharp but bracing vetiver.

Interestingly, both of these Armani Prive fragrances were created by Michel Almairac. They were the only ones I found, and, as far as I know, the only two he created for the line. Almairac is someone I've known about and with whom I've been fairly familiar ever since I started consulting the nowsmellthis nose directory. Until recently, I never took as much of an interest in him as in my initial favorites: Maurice Roucel, Annick Menardo, Calice Becker, Sophia Grojsman. Slowly, I've acquired more and more of his fragrances, and over time have started to pay more mind. Cuir Amethyste and Bois d'Encens certainly caught my attention. Until smelling these powerhouses of persistence, I'd thought of him as someone who created some nice but wan fragrances, among them L'Artisan's Voleur de Roses, Chopard's Casmir, Gres' Cabaret, Gucci Pour Homme, and Rush, most of which I liked, some of which I really loved, all of which, however loud in theory, faded to a maddening whisper on my skin. While the Prive scents don't change my mind about these others, they do give me a more well-rounded appreciation.

One last thing about Armani. I find--do you?--that those sheaths they come in, wood casing with stone tops, somehow reinforce the idea that they aren't worth the asking price. The bottles are light as air, which made me feel, however unconsciously, that there was practically nothing in them, that whatever it was had little substance. Who knows what the design principle was behind this packaging decision from a rigorously, even religiously, uniform company. Armani's aesthetic is all about straight lines, simple contours. No showy flourishes intrude upon this cool surface like a ripple does on the surface of a pond. In that sense, the bottles fit. But from a sales perspective, lightweight risks reading as negligible.

I did make some other purchases, though none which will likely inspire jealous fits of rage. Who knew Bulgari Blu was so nice? I didn't. The packaging is so similar to Bulgari Blue Notte that I'm not sure I even realized these were two separate fragrances. Blu gets knocked a lot on the blogs and boards, I discovered. Soapy, too much ginger, yuk, gross, etc. I think it's a far superior ginger scent to the latest Ellena Hermes, by so far a margin that to compare them in any other way would be exceedingly misleading. Blu is milkier, for one, in stark contrast to the Jardin's ozonic properties. It's a richer, more pungent ginger, with a creamy floral influence. I like it a lot and will wear it frequently (as frequently as someone with as many fragrances as I own can).

Let me just close by saying that being sick with a cold sucks for anyone. For a perfume lover, it's truly utter hell. For the last two days I've been unable to smell a thing. What torture it was last night, inviting my friend Bard over for dinner, begging him to describe for me the smell of Parfum D'Habit and Ambre Precieux, especially when his descriptions are so typically off the wall. Please, I begged him, try to describe them, just this once, using typical perfume descriptors, rather than items one finds in a thrift shop, as "stuffy vinyl suitcase with strawberry juice stain" will mean next to nothing to me. It didn't help that my efforts to reconcile his impressions with the reviews on makeupalley and basenotes proved futile. Without fail, eight out of ten reviewers described Habit's opening as compost or fecal or Kouros with even more urine. Bard's bewildering verdict was "no such thing." The consensus seems to be good longevity and sillage, whereas Bard says both Precieux and Habit remain skin scents, barely there. Any thoughts from readers who have smelled these and can describe them realistically, as opposed to romantically? Your input would be more than welcome, and I promise I'll return the favor in your time of need.