Category Archive: Thierry Mugler

There Goes My Diet – Angel Chocolates by MUGLER x La Maison du Chocolat

OMFG
OMFG

Please forgive my excitement, fellow perfume nerds, but it simply cannot be contained today, for there are now Angel chocolates on the market. Now, if you know me, you know that there are three things I hold dear to my heart in this world; 1) my family (including my cats) and friends; and 2) food; and 3) MUGLER. So it stands to reason then, that the idea of MUGLER themed chocolates, nay ANGEL themed chocolates would get me just a tad excited. Well that’s exactly what’s got me going today and hopefully they will do the same to you!

So, MUGLER have teamed up with another legendary French house, the chocolatey heaven of La Maison du Chocolat to translate their most iconic fragrance into a gustatory delight. The result is a box of beautiful chocolates that break down the three key accords of Angel into edible delights that are as indulgent as the scent itself. If, like me, you were trying to diet then I’m sorry, Angel has other plans for you and as we all know, she does not take no for answer.

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Perfume Review: Alien Eau Sublime by MUGLER

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Alien Eau Sublime

At this point, MUGLER have provided more than enough evidence for us to declare that there is life on another planet. Having discovered the existence of extra terrestrials in 2005, the brand has paraded a variety of alien species under our noses, wafting solar vixens and Venus sirens that range from the luminescent and light to the indulgent and gourmand, not to mention the oud-filled! The great thing about MUGLER is that they’re rather good at these flankers, always paying respect to the olfactory signatures that make their pillar fragrances do bold and beautiful. So whilst we’ve seen an Alien invasion since 2005, it’s fair to say that these ETs have certainly come in peace.

For 2017, MUGLER are revisiting Alien once again with Alien Eau Sublime. MUGLER describe it as being “a new solar adventure” with a “fresh, energising and luminous new juice”. Teaming up once again with legendary perfume Dominique Ropion (Carnal Flower, Portrait of a Lady and a billion other classics), MUGLER have pieced together a fragrance that takes inspiration from white amethyst, evoking an experience that is incandescent and white in comparison to Alien’s glowing purple tones. As MULGER say: “Alien Eau Sublime takes to you to a universe bathed in light.”

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Perfume Review: Les Exceptions Hot Cologne by MUGLER

Hot Damn! It's Hot Cologne!
Hot Damn! It’s Hot Cologne!

Here we are! The first review of 2017! I’ve spent a lot of time trying to work out what to write for my first post of the year (hence why I’ve been on an extended hiatus – lucky me) and I must admit that I was reluctant to start with a review simply because I wanted to kick off with something a little bit different . That said, a review feels like a good place to kick off the year because it’s a good opportunity to see where we will go scent-wise, so that’s exactly what I’m doing. Luckily for me 2017 has already seen a number of launches so I wasn’t short of something to pick for review number one. Even luckier was the fact that the latest launch from my favourite brand appeared on my doorstep just a few days ago!

My love of all things MUGLER has been documented many times. So many times, in fact, that I’ve probably bored you all to tears by banging on about my adoration for Angel et al. So I will spare you the hyperbole this time and instead will say that I very much appreciated the brand’s launch of their exclusive line Les Exceptions last year. With Les Exceptions, MUGLER took on the classics, creating fragrances based on the major olfactory families, serving each with a MUGLER twist. Every one of the Les Exceptions scents felt decidedly un-MUGLER, in the sense that they weren’t overtly daring or challenging, yet at the same time they really did add something innovative to classic French perfumery. In short, Les Exceptions is a phenomenally good collection and one that MUGLER seem to want to explore further.

The latest scent to launch within Les Exceptions is Hot Cologne which, if you haven’t guessed by the name, plays with the themes found within the classic Eau de Cologne. Now, this is MUGLER we’re talking about here so to expect a typical cologne is to underestimate the nature of the brand. MUGLER already have Cologne (launched in 2001), which is highly odd with its notes of steam and ‘S’ (rumoured to be a sperm accord), so Hot Cologne, the eight instalment in the collection, was never going to be a simple cologne in the manner of say 4711 and instead, this cologne, says MUGLER, “breathes fire and ice…and eau de cologne turns torrid”. Intriguing!

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Celestial Beacon – MUGLER Angel Perfumed Candle

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Celestial Beacon

Well here’s a rather wonderful treat for the card carrying members of the Muglerati out there: an Angel scented candle. Now, those of you who follow MUGLER will know that the brand has previously dabbled with the world of home fragrance, having launched some beautiful Angel candles previously in dinky star-shaped votives in addition to small Alien candles in purple tins as gifts with purchases. But never has MUGLER gone all out candle-wise, well, until now that is and it would be fair to say that they are now absolutely spoiling us with some wonderfully delectable treats to burn and scent one’s home.

Launching as a limited edition for 2016, the MUGLER Perfumed Candles are available scented with the brand’s two iconic feminines: Angel and Alien. What’s more, they are also available online at MUGLER scented with the Les Exceptions fragrances for a slightly higher price. These candles extend one’s MUGLER addiction into the home, allowing members of the Muglerati to truly commit to the cause by allowing their favourite MUGLER fragrance to permeate their boudoir as well as their body. MUGLER says that these Perfumed Candles will “prolong fragrant pleasures with a new perfume ritual” and guess what? I’m all for that in every way, shape and form!

“The Angel candle will transform your interior into a boudoir of delight: a whirlwind of delicious emotions, sensuality and glamour. Containing notes of vanilla, chocolate and caramel counterbalanced by the forceful woody scent of patchouli, the fragrance will envelop the home in a warming oriental gourmand scent.”

– MUGLER

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Burning Man – MUGLER A*Men Pure Tonka Perfume Review

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A*Men Pure Tonka

MUGLER may only have one masculine fragrance on the market, the astronomically excessive A*Men (or Angel Men as it’s also known), but they’ve certainly made up for a lack of diversity in their male lineup with a prolific number of flankers. Since its launch in 1996, A*Men has been boozed up, sexed up and made to sit down with a hot cup of coffee to recover. It’s a fragrance that lends itself very well to enhancements and MUGLER have been incredibly savvy with their many interpretations of the scent’s chocolate cacophony, always taking its signature and teasing out an entirely new and exciting facet in the way that a good flanker should.

20 years on and the latest olfactory twist in the A*Men lineup is Pure Tonka an “exhilarating fragrance for a man no one can resist” that sees a “searing fusion between the sensuality of tonka beans and the purity of lavender”. The tonka bean is a staple of masculine perfumery due to its high content of coumarin, which is a key part of the fougére accord. It has a vast and complex odour profile that ranges from hay, vanilla and marzipan to sour cherry, liquorice and clove. In the original A*Men, the tonka bean was merely a small cog within a much larger wheel, which also consisted of other moving parts such as; lavender, mint, coffee, patchouli, tar, vanilla and caramel. In A*Men Pure Tonka, the tonka bean is pulled right into the forefront and centre, and the volume is dialled way up to extreme levels to create a MUGLER fragrance that is really quite something to behold, even by their standards.

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Six Scents to Make You Appreciate Musk

Six Scents to Make You Appreciate Musk
Six Scents to Make You Appreciate Musk

I’m often asking people to sniff things and when I do, a common response is “it’s a bit musky”. This always strikes me as an unusual answer, mainly because many of these fragrances would not be classified as musks in the typical sense. Perhaps people see ‘musky’ as anything that is slightly funky, or perhaps it’s just anything that is difficult to describe and where musk seems like the safe descriptor. Whatever it is, this got me to thinking seriously about what musk really smells like and what it brings to a fragrance.

What I do know however, is that musk is a spectrum, one that ranges from laundry-like purity to animalic pornography. It’s a wide scope for sure and one that traverses a huge range of fragrances. In this post, which is the start of a new series entitled ‘Six Scents’, I take a look at six fragrances on the musk spectrum, moving from the cleanliness of a spin cycle to the shocking sin of a scent between the thighs. Buckle up, fragrance nerds, because this is going to be quite a ride!

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Amuse Bouche – MUGLER Angel Muse Perfume Review

MUGLER'S New Muse

Few things get my pulse racing like a brand spanking new MUGLER launch, even more so if that launch is a spin-off of my all-time favourite fragrance, Angel. So one can imagine my excitement when Angel Muse landed on my doorstep. We’re going to #HateToLove this modern spin on the gourmand queen that is Angel, MUGLER say, and they’re not wrong, because as much as I don’t like to see my beloved celestial being messed about with, I begrudgingly admit (not really, you know I’m here for all things MUGLER) that I do enjoy Angel Muse very much indeed.

Angel Muse was created by Givaudan perfumer Quentin Bisch, who I must say is a real up and coming talent within the industry, having done great work with Etat Libre d’Orange (see Hermann à Mes Côtés Me Paraissait Une Ombre & La Fin du Monde) and with MUGLER on last year’s sticky sweet A*Men Ultra Zest. Bisch is a good fit for Mugler because he is a truly innovative perfumer who seems to work best when tasked with crafting novel accords, such as the popcorn note found within La Fin du Monde. For Angel Muse, Bisch switches out dark chocolate for hazelnut and adds an element of masculinity with vetiver, taking Angel to new and very modern heights.

I wrote a full break down of Angel Muse for my Escentual column a few weeks back (clicky here to give that a read), so I’m going for a review en bref today. I also wanted an excuse to buy a jar of Nutella to use purely for photographic reasons of course. Although, it would have been a waste not to have a spoon or twelve now, wouldn’t it? So let’s get to it and give Angel Muse a good sniff to see whether it is as delicious and divine as Nutella, or whether it falls short of its lineage…

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Pablo Picasso and the Classics – Mugler Les Exceptions Perfume Review

Let's Catch the Oriental Express to Mugler Town
Let’s Catch the Oriental Express to Mugler Town

In the 1920s, the legendary Spanish painter Pablo Picasso was driven to move away from cubism and paint in the style of the classics, just to prove that he could. Having always been at the forefront of modern perfumery, the equally iconic house of Mugler have decided to make a similar move with their latest collection of fragrances: Les Exceptions. Mugler create bold, extra-terrestrial fragrances that are far removed from the tropes of modern perfumery. They do not follow genres or olfactory families, they create them, having famously crafted the oriental gourmand genre with Angel, the solar woody genre with Alien and the, err, well, whatever genre you could classify that weirdo, Womanity as – bioluminescent fruit, perhaps? In fragrance Mugler are the leaders, not the followers.

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Glamazon Gourmand – Mugler Innocent Perfume Review

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Innocent

The legendary house of Mugler does not create fragrances, they birth legends and raise celestial beings. As a couturier, Thierry Mugler crafted clothing that released the inner goddess or demon of the Mugler woman, turning them into vast Glamazons and Dominatrixes. His fragrances are no different: they are the strength, the passion, the beauty and the force of women, with each one, Angel, Alien and Womanity, possessing a bold character that celebrates the unending beauty of fascinating and strong women.

These three idiosyncratic icons, Angel, Alien and Womanity, cast large, Amazonian shadows that dim the lights of most things around them, so I’d like to shed a little light on a Mugler that doesn’t always get the attention that it deserves. I’m referring to Innocent, which is currently exclusive to Mugler online and some travel retail locations (let’s say thanks to the brand for still making it rather than discontinuing it, as many would). Innocent shines brightly in its own way and it deserves a little attention every now and then because it celebrates all that is Mugler but approaches this spirit from an entirely more dressed down place.

Innocent was launched in 1998 as ‘Angel Innocent‘ and was created by perfumers Laurent Bruyère and Dominique Ropion. As Luca Turin says in Perfumes : The A-Z Guide, it was the first “authorised clone” of Angel, working as a less confrontational and challenging version of Mugler’s flagship fragrance for those people that couldn’t quite handle all of Angel’s angular volumes. Essentially, the fragrance takes the DNA of Angel, retaining its fruity and gourmand facets in a lighter way, but dialling right down on the butch patchouli that makes Angel so, well, Angel! The result is a delightfully bright and cheerful version of Angel that definitely feels like her spawn, but is different enough to craft its own niche. Just as Mugler describes, Innocent is a mischievous and flirtatious take on a legend.

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The Red Deserts of Mars – Thierry Mugler Alien Oud Majestueux Perfume Review

Alien in Red
Alien in Red

It was reported last week that NASA had found evidence of liquid water flowing on Mars. The red planet is no longer a dry, and arid collection of rock and dust, it seems. In other surprising and space-related news, Thierry Mugler has made the decision to launch a limited edition version of Alien called ‘Alien Oud Majestueux’, an oriental fragrance that sees the hyper-jasmine of the original accompanied by oud, the ever popular heartwood extracted from the Aquilaria tree, and seen so often in modern fragrances over the last few years. Composed by the masterful Dominique Ropion, who co-signed the original with Laurent Bruyere, this new version of Alien promises to tantalise with its opulent spices and sweet flower nectar. Colour me intrigued.

Now, I must confess that the news of an oud-injected version of Mugler’s successful Alien did arouse some titters on Twitter in addition to the usual moans about the over-exposure of everyone’s favourite noble tree rot. Of course, Mugler has all but resisted the oud trend for quite some time (although, they have flirted with the note in their Miroir Miroir! series) and the fact that the last non-oud converted bastion of the industry had finally given in did elicit a sigh or two, from yours truly included. As time progressed however, the idea of an Alien oud grew to be an interesting one. I mean, Alien is a pretty fierce woody jasmine fragrance that lends itself well to remixes (see Alien Essence Absolue & Alien Le Goût du Parfum), and a middle-eastern take on an intense, space-age floral actually seemed like something worth sniffing. At risk of spoiling the rest of this review, I can confirm that it is.

“Cocoon your mind, body and soul in Alien Oud Majestueux, the new oriental fragrance. This scent will transport you to the spice markets of the Middle East where your senses will be tantalised with the fragrant notes of opulent spices and sweet flower nectar.”

– Thierry Mugler

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