MUGLER have finally launched the highly-anticipated ALIEN MAN – a masculine counterpart to their blockbuster feminine ALIEN (launched in 2005) and their first male pillar since B*MEN in 2004. As you know, I’m a massive MUGLER fan so I have wasted no time in putting together some words in my weekly Escentual column to give you all of the details. So, if you want to know what ALIEN MAN smells like then all you need to do is click here and you’ll be taken on a little bit of a space voyage through this brand new scent.

You may notice that my review for Escentual is somewhat descriptive and that’s because I must admit that I am really disappointed in this launch. Now, don’t get me wrong, ALIEN MAN is a perfectly decent fragrance (it’s very smooth and has an addictive, creamy leather quality) and I’ll admit that I have worn it quite a few times, not just for my review, but because I want to. So ALIEN MAN definitely meets my very first test when I review a scent – it smells good.

What’s the problem then? Well, it just doesn’t smell like a MUGLER to me. It’s super commercial and it has a familiarity to it in the fresh, herbal opening that puts it amongst many sporty masculines in the mainstream. Of course, MUGLER has to make stuff that appeals to the market, but they’ve always done this in a subversive way and ALIEN MAN lacks the collision and olfactory shock that ANGEL, ALIEN, A*MEN, WOMANITY and even AURA (which was more commercial but managed to still smell like nothing else out there) have in spades.

For their first masculine pillar in 14 years, ALIEN MAN doesn’t really say anything new nor does it have the bold radiance of its feminine counterpart. It’s not a bad fragrance objectively but if I were to smell it blind, I wouldn’t know it was a MUGLER, which is something I could not say for the others. Let’s just hope this is simply a blip in the MUGLER franchise (it’s the Alien3 of the MUGLER world) and that MUGLER will excite with more olfactory shocks to come. I guess they shocked me this time, just not in the right way…

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Disclaimer

Sample via Escentual. Images are my own. I write for Escentual as their Fragrance Expert. My views are my own.