I don’t know what it is that makes us connect with perfumes in the way that we do. Everyone has their own individual fragrance and personal reason for connecting with that fragrance. That connection may be a memory, a place, a person, or quite simply the fragrance… or superficially… the bottle or packaging.
My favourite, since 1992 when it was first created is Theirry Mugler’s Angel.
I remember being in Paris, just prior to Christmas and having purchased a French Vogue Magazine, I stumbled across the promotional campaign for the newly launched Angel perfume. As I vaguely recollect, it had this stunning image of Jerry Hall, in a celestial light blue gown and a page filled with what I was sure were evocative French words. So I sat there in my hotel room and painstakingly translated every word with my French-English dictionary so I could determine if they were in fact evocative or not…
From memory, it told a beautiful tale of the fragrances of Christmas, of daddy’s whiskers, vanilla, baking, chocolate, memories of childhood… I am not really sure why I connected in the way that I did, but I was in Paris, it was nearly Christmas, and Christmas winter fragrances were all around me… amongst the city smells as well, but I don’t want to lose my train of thought.
And then there was the bottle… this exquisitely handcrafted obliquely faceted star, that was created by Brosse Master Glassmakers. It was ticking all the boxes… I just needed to know what it actually smelt like now…
So off I went, to Printemps, Paris’s leading department store, to determine whether or not it was indeed the fragrance for me.
I like to think that Thierry Mugler and I are kindred spirits… everything he touches and puts his divine inspiration to, is magic to me… his fashion, his photography… so it was inevitable that it was going to be true love at first whiff…
Muglers’ Angel became one of the first perfumes that really capitalised on what is now referred to as a ‘gourmand perfume’… perfumes that are more of a flavour than a fragrance. It has the sweetness of pralines and chocolate… and the patchouli… I would never have thought that I would love patchouli so much… and then when the fragrance lingers, the vanilla base notes intoxicate, giving it on going permanence… and the liquid itself is celestially blue…
Angel has been ‘my’ fragrance from that day… for years it was not available in Australia and I had to rely on family and friends traveling to Europe to think of me as the passed through Duty Free… but happily it is now available in most leading departments stores and perfumeries and is literally on tap: the beautiful star shaped bottle is uniquely refillable.
Of course Thierry Mugler has through this delectable fragrance created something of an enigma for himself and many copycats ensued as a result, although if you ask me… none have ever come close to matching the perfection of Angel.
A word of warning: Angel is not for everybody… I have inherited many bottles of Angel through friends wanting to capture this same essence, only to have it clash violently with their skin acids… maybe this is a result of its clever designing – you can’t choose Angel… it chooses you…
So when somebody asks me what fragrance I am wearing (and they do, CONSTANTLY), I can tell them that I smell like an Angel… and on some surreal level… I do 🙂
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This post was written by Petra Frieser – Pebbles + Pomegranate Seeds
