Thierry Mugler's A*Men

Following up a blockbuster perfume can’t be an easy task; crafting one that’s on par with its predecessor must be even less so; and marketing said follow-up to men surely sits on the bottom rung of the fragrance industry’s “dirty jobs” ladder. The mainstream man has notoriously lowbrow taste, an aversion to distinctive styles – witness the uniformity of the corporate world’s suits and ties - and tight purse strings (so to speak) regarding grooming products. Thierry Mugler’s epochal Angel represented a paradigm shift for the industry’s key players; suddenly, nothing seemed off-limits, no perfume too avant-garde to become a smash hit (given time and a massive marketing budget, of course). Weird was suddenly good, and weird with a blockbuster name attached even better. The launch of A*Men was a no-brainer in this context, but it was still a gamble. Would men take to a “gourmand” fragrance as readily as women did with Angel? Would they shuck the shackles of the stereotypical men’s fragrance blueprint – citrus, aromatics, wood, musk – and embrace a new ideal, one reeking of chocolate and caramel? Would A*Men be an expensive flop?

It certainly had all the makings of one, in retrospect. The advertising, featuring a Terminator 2-style liquid metal avatar gravely holding the bottle aloft, was an exercise in self-serious pomp; the bottle itself, a cartoonish flask emblazoned with a cerulean star, was patently goofy; and the name certainly didn’t lend itself to easy, just-us-guys small talk. (“What’s that your wearing?” “Uh, A*Men.” “What?” “It’s the men’s version of Angel.” “You’re wearing a cologne called Angel?” “It’s for MEN. REALLY.” “Whatever you say, dude.”) But lo, the gamble paid off – Mugler should take up residence in Vegas, he’d probably make a killing – and A*Men hit its mark, ill-defined though that mark may have been. It’s still in production and a perennial bestseller, with loads of moneymaking flankers and a rabid fan base. Perhaps there’s hope for the modern male yet.

I like to compare A*Men to blue cheese – not in terms of smell, of course, but in appeal. One does not come out of the womb loving A*Men. One works up to A*Men, braces him/herself for it, acquires a taste. It is not, like so many of its counterparts in the fragrance department, eager to please. In fact, upon first spray, it seems expressly designed not to please: A blast of peppermint, tar, industrial-strength lavender, nuclear bergamot, and over-extracted espresso grounds greets the nose, with all the subtlety and harmony of a jackhammer against a marble floor. It is an unholy brew, with little obvious appeal beyond sheer “WTF” audacity. At this point, most right-thinking people quickly put down the tester bottle and scramble for some hand sanitizer, myself included. But soft! Give it time, and the mint fades, the lavender calms, and the coffee takes on a robust, silky quality. A vivid dark chocolate note creeps in, flanked by vanilla and caramel. Patchouli and cedar sing an alluring background harmony, and a hint of powder and musk play a smooth backing track. The drydown is a velvety combination of caramel, patchouli, toffee, and a hint of leather, with a clear family resemblance to its big sister. (Both Angel and A*Men could be worn by either gender, for the record.) My repulsion turns to shock at the 180-degree turn things have taken, then to pure lust as I sniff my wrist compulsively and crave coffee ice cream.

It took me a good two years of sporadic testing to finally come around to A*Men’s brash character and high-calorie charm (I've dissed it more than once on this blog alone), and now I’m head over heels for the stuff. What once struck me as high-pitched and overexposed now seems vibrant and hypnotic. It’s true that the volume of the entire production is dialed awfully high – don’t wear A*Men to the office – but I finally realized that A*Men’s brand of rough-edged appeal is exactly what I look for in a perfume. This is no fragrance for wimps, nor for anyone who favors the soft-spoken or transparent. A*Men is solid, lush, and full-bodied; if most men’s fragrances are string quartets playing Pachelbel, A*Men is an orchestra playing Wagner. In a confectionary.

Like Angel, A*Men makes no concessions to elegance or good taste - beyond a taste for sweets, of course – and is all the better for it. Men need to be reminded just as much as women that, beyond its functionality as a product to make you smell good, perfume should be fun, something to put a smile on your face and a spring in your step. Nothing is quite so fun as freewheeling decadence, and A*Men is as decadent as they come. A bundle of contradictions, an oddball stew of conflicting accords that somehow works, and a true original, A*Men is delightful to wear and an important reminder that masculine fragrances need not pander to be successful. May it never be out of production.

Random sample hour: Giorgio Armani's Armani Code

Sweet, silky, and woody, with hints of mint, coconut (?), hairspray (?!), shaving foam, tonka bean, Irish Spring soap, and musk. Armani Code holds the distinction of being the first fragrance that made my knees weak and my heart go pitter-patter, back in my college freshman days when I rarely wore fragrance, didn't know Chanel from Cerutti, and thought that Calvin Klein whipped up Obsession personally in his lab. This stuff was called "Black Code" back then, and I bought some for my dad in '05, knowing only that it was Armani (read: classy!) and that the bottle looked quite dashing. I found it for peanuts on eBay, and my thrill at snagging a bargain turned sour when I opened the package and realized I'd bid on a 5 ml mini. (Wah-waaahhhh.) I couldn't very well gift my father a mini, so I bought him a full-size in the department store and kept the mini for myself. And when I popped the cap off and gave it a sniff...ohhh, boy. Imagine a dark, immaculately tailored, pebble-smooth Armani tuxedo worn by a freshly shaven, heartbreakingly handsome man on a crisp autumn night. Now bottle it. That was Black Code for me, and I kept that mini for a good five years, wearing it only on Special Occasions so as to ration its lusciousness. It remains the only fragrance I've worn that has prompted a young woman to bite my neck. (She was a friend, and rather inebriated at the time, but still.)

Fast-forward seven years, and a department store SA has just dropped a fresh sample of Armani Code into my shopping bag. How does it strike me now, with the benefits of time, a well-travelled nose, and no personal stake in the matter? Pretty damn good, actually. I suspect this formula is a tad thinner and slightly less compelling than that of my mini - time having passed, and accountants being what they are - but the satin polish is still here, the tuxedo still hangs perfectly, and the whole production is rather hard to resist. I'd written off Code as overworn and overplayed by too many dancefloor douchebags in the latter half of the aughts, and I figured I'd grown immune to its charms as a result. But here I sit, my arm freshly spritzed, and damned if I'm not smitten all over again. There's something refreshingly sober and relaxed about Code in sharp contrast to many masculines that have followed, and to say that the fellas could do a whole lot worse is an understatement. I just might wear it tomorrow.

Dior's Hypnotic Poison

Contrary to its reputation as a smouldering, heavy-lidded weapon of seduction, Dior's Hypnotic Poison is actually a first-rate comfort scent, a pillowy blend of vanilla, marzipan, jasmine, and sandalwood that barely hints at intentions less than spotless. It's also arguably the most distinctive of the current Poison line, what with the 1985 original having its fangs filed down and its stilettos traded in for office-friendly pumps sometime in the last decade, its 1994 followup Tendre Poison discontinued, and the other two - 2004's Pure and and 2007's Midnight - barely worth mentioning. Hell, Hypnotic is probably the most distinctive scent in the current Dior lineup, its olfactory signature and overall effect bearing no connective tissue or evolutionary links to any other perfume before or since. It's not a fruity floral, it's not an Angel clone, it's not a leathery chypre or a spicy oriental. It contains no citrus, no resins, no patchouli, no rose. It doesn't screech, but it projects; it doesn't sit on the skin like a wet carpet, yet it has depth and presence. It's sweet, but not candied or juvenile, and it has a gourmand feel without smelling literally edible (that's too easy, and also boring). It's not overtly feminine, but neither does it bear ostentatiously masculine tics, shoehorned into a classically feminine composition in order to lazily "sexify" things. (See Calvin Klein's Euphoria for the best of this rather tired lot.) It smells rich and sophisticated, but about as far from a typically "perfumey" scent as you can get without dragging in headshop oils. Basically, Hypnotic Poison is a singular, almost alien being, delicious and legitimately mysterious in an industry that promises such mystery routinely and delivers rarely.

The mystery arises from its unique olfactory effect. Sprayed on the skin and smelled up close, Hypnotic Poison is a bit flat, slightly bitter from the almond note, and rather nutty (the topnotes include caraway, but I detect a bit of hazelnut in there, too). Stand back, though, and the entire composition unfolds and practically dances in the air, splaying streams of silky jasmine, boozy vanilla, crisp sandalwood and sensual musk all around, glossed over with the aforementioned bitter almond sheen (this is not the cherry-almond of DiSaronno liqueur or that almond extract gathering dust in your kitchen cupboard) and delightul hints of creamy coconut and baking spice. The composition feels unusually dense and solid, almost muted in its color palette, yet it diffuses effortlessly and isn't the least bit suffocating.

It's also an uncommonly no-frills venture. Hypnotic Poison hits on an idea - almond/vanilla/jasmine, dark and velvety - and basically serves it up as is, with no bells and whistles. When the "as is" is this delectable, who needs garnishes? Hypnotic Poison is confident in its quality; it knows it has the goods. It's also remarkably, almost maddeningly addictive. One of the few women's perfumes I can pick out of a crowd with pinpoint accuracy, Hypnotic Poison more or less drives me to distraction every time I smell it in passing. (Another one that stops me in my tracks? Calvin Klein Euphoria. Maybe I shouldn't have backhanded it up top.) Once I learned the name of that ambrosial smell wafting from various friends, coworkers, and passersby, I stormed department stores and sprayed their testers like they were hits of heroin. Eventually I broke down and bought a bottle so I could sleep at night. It's serious business, this perfume hobby.

Fresh's Cannabis Santal

Well, not really. The "cannabis" smells more like hemp, if anything - a sweet, earthy, hay-like accord, lovely but hardly the sickly, skunk-like reek of marijuana, smoked or otherwise. And the santal - sandalwood - mostly sings backup harmony rather than taking center stage as its top billing would suggest. (Frankly, patchouli and coumarin are the real stars of this show.) But regardless of its slight identity crisis, Cannabis Santal works beautifully, offering a warm, pillowy blend of sweet comfort with just the right amount of dirt.

The opening is a delightful kitchen-door waft of plums, peaches, and strawberries, caramelized and autumnally spiced. The sweetness threatens to cloy, but it's kept in check by the aforementioned hay - sorry, cannabis, man - and a patchouli that pulls off the hat trick of being both earthy and restrained. This patchouli isn't of the musty, trunk-in-the-attic variety (see Clinique's Aromatics Elixir and the original Prada), nor is it that squeaky-clean "modern" patchouli, borne of test tubes and omnipresent in perfumes aimed at young tartlets who want something only mildly suggestive beneath their bubbling flowers and fruit. This is a smooth, decadent patchouli, redolent of the forest floor yet elegant enough for cocktail hour. The combination of patchouli, fruit, a dash of cocoa, a veil of tangy vetiver, and a taffy-like coumarin backbone - and, oh yeah, a bit of sandalwood - gives Cannabis Santal more than a passing resemblance to none other than Thierry Mugler's Angel. The olfactory tug of war between dry and diabetic is less baroque and vivid here, and there's no cotton candy machine in sight, but the comparison is hard to dismiss. Where Cannabis Santal differs crucially, though, is in its intent: Angel blares and demands attention, Cannabis Santal is content to draw you in. (Both scream to be eaten.)

Cannabis Santal is an eau de parfum, and has terrific lasting power but polite sillage after the first 20 minutes or so. (It also clings to clothes for days, so you'd better be a patchouli fan.) Upon its release, it was marketed to men, somewhat bafflingly given its sweet nature and lack of traditionally "macho" notes of citrus, aromatics, and wood. Plenty of women adopted it regardless, at least judging by reviews on MakeupAlley, and it seems to have found a cult fan base of women and men alike. Its appeal is skewed more niche than mainstream, and it comes off as a bit of an oddball at times, which suits me - and Cannabis Santal - just fine. (Groovy.)

Thierry Mugler's Angel Eau de Toilette

On the heels of a brand-new marketing campaign for Thierry Mugler's perennial bestseller Angel (featuring the buxom Eva Mendes, no stranger to perfume advertising) comes an Eau de Toilette variation of the original Eau de Parfum. This isn't the first time Angel has been been lightened and freshened for those who can't stomach the brash and heady original - 1999's Angel Innocent presented a softer, more childlike vision of similar gourmandise, and 2007's Eau de Star was Angel on the beach sipping a watermelon daiquiri - but it's the first to be presented on equal footing with its predecessor, and is expected to be a permanent addition to the Mugler lineup. We may as well find out what we're in for now, before our noses are assaulted from passersby trailing a drugstore-candy version of the stench that wafts from your local Bath and Body Works and pervades for miles. Angel Eau de Toilette is not a shy creature, but nor is it particularly unique.

The opening is familiar; Angel's signature camphoraceous chocolate-and-cotton-candy stew makes its presence known at first spritz, here done with a somewhat lighter hand and made fresher and more berry-like. The cotton candy fades, the chocolate stays a mere whisper, and a fruity/soapy/floral heart accord barges in, calling to mind that shower gel you bought at the Body Shop because it was on sale and came with a free tube of lip balm. Angel's patchouli undercarriage - the most divisive aspect of a fragrance full of them - is here, but cleaner and less earthy, and there's no coumarin to soften and thicken the overriding sweetness and light (coumarin was the unsung hero of the original Angel's composition, lending a taffy-like chewiness and pipe-tobacco density to the saccharine top notes). As the fragrance fades the patchouli becomes more evident, but it's still too inconsequential to make much of an impression. The drydown supposedly contains cedar, but then, BBW's Twilight Woods was supposedly a dark, forest-floor scent and contained enough sugar to send an elephant into a coma. Angel EdT is working with a similar palette, the Sweet Oriental Lite selection, and it's a little disappointing.

Angel EdT's most grievous error, though, is in choosing to smell like nothing you haven't smelled before. Say what you will about 1992's Angel - and most of you reading this surely already have - but it wasn't just unique, it was from another planet. It broke nearly every rule in the playbook and shook the perfume industry to its core. It attracted and repelled in equal measure, and eventually took over the world through sheer force of personality and brutish charm. Lighting can't strike twice, and Angel's many imitators have somewhat dulled its shock-of-the-new effect circa 2011, but couldn't Mugler have stepped up to the plate and delivered something a little less generic? Angel Eau de Toilette is safe and middling, and while admirably less "edible" than might be expected from such a venture, it's still too sweet and juvenile for most anyone over 18. I do predict it will sell like hotcakes, and the bottle is certainly an eye-catcher, but I'll be shocked if this Eau de Toilette elicits anywhere near the love-or-hate reception of the Eau de Parfum; it's a bland, watercolor recreation of a true pioneer that deserves better. Wearing it, I longed for nothing more than to be wrapped in a cloud of the original - or failing that, a shower.

In a nutshell: YSL's Opium pour Homme

Woody vanilla with hints of spice, talc, tobacco, cedar, and patchouli, wrapped in a tailored cashmere V-neck that still manages to breathe. Less baroque, boozy, and dramatic than the women's version, but with a similar fizzy cola veneer and autumnal hue. Opium pour Homme is masculine vanilla done right: soft, elegant, and sweetly sexy instead of obnoxiously gourmand (looking at you, A*Men) or viciously powdery and ironically femme (hi, Le Mâle and Joop!). Dries down to a warm, slightly leathery patchouli-cedar with a wisp of vanillic smoke curling throughout. The original Opium is a wonderful thing, a whirlwind of opulence coming at you from all angles - in Technicolor, with surround sound - but its elbow-jabbing sillage and brick-wall density make it something of a loose cannon, hard to tame and wear discreetly. Pour Homme is far more relaxed and user-friendly, yet doesn't descend into dullsville the way so many masculine sequels to feminine originals can (shout-out to my peeps Euphoria for Men and Dune pour Homme, among many others). Just like that tailored V-neck, Opium pour Homme works because it's built with care, demands nothing of its wearer, and needs no parade to prove its good taste. It's a winner, and easily wearable for women who want a smart, non-candied vanilla, or for whom the original Opium is just too much. Bonus: cheaper than dirt and about as easy to find (check online discounters, perfume shops, your local Wal-Mart, and hell, the gas station).

Cartier's Déclaration

Perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena has, over the last two decades or so, developed and honed what has come to be his signature style. His perfumes are sparse, translucent, cut from thoroughly modern cloth but draped over the framework of classic perfumery, and distinctive while remaining effortlessly wearable. Unlike the sturm und drang of the 1970s and '80s bestsellers, almost all of which required a few extra ounces of either extreme cockiness or cocaine-fuelled hysteria on the part of the wearer to pull them off convincingly (YSL Opium, Dior Poison, and Ralph Lauren Polo come immediately to mind, but there were more, oh so much more), Ellena's creations demand nothing of the user besides skin. They're built for the modern age, when we don't want our fragrance to announce its presence before we do, but would rather it accentuate and enhance our natural charisma, surrounding us like a subtle aura of confidence and good taste.

One of the first of Ellena's modern style, and arguably the most influential, was Déclaration by Cartier. Released in 1998, Déclaration is as notable for its sheer, gossamer-light treatment of traditionally heavy materials - woods, spice, moss - as for its use of Iso E Super, a synthetic aroma molecule borne of the mid-'80s and possessing a slightly sweet, woody scent and a shimmering, radiant, almost velvety texture. Déclaration was one of the first fragrances to shine the spotlight on Iso E, which has now found its way into almost every mainstream masculine scent on the market, and more than a few feminines as well. It makes up a whopping 50% of the formula for Hermes' Terre d'Hermes (2006), another Ellena bestseller that is arguably the apotheosis of his current style - flinty and full of character, but as lucid and wearable as a sheer cotton tee. Ellena's use of Iso E Super is so profligate that it's become something of a calling card for the perfumer, and the material's distinctive yet ephermal character seems a perfect match for Ellena's style.

Despite its modern sheen, Déclaration has its feet firmly planted in the classic French eau fraiche creations of the 1950s and '60s, with their sparkle of spice and citrus over bases of leather, woods, moss, and musk. (Vintage framework, modern cloth.) Délcaration does away with the musk - a contributing factor to its transparency - and ramps up the spice, particularly cardamom, ginger, and cumin. Juniper, lavender, wormwood, and cedar lend a slightly medicinal aura to the top notes, which consist of full-bodied, almost photorealistic renditions of bergamot, orange, and lime. The base is a long-lasting, smooth, and delicious combination of cedar, vetiver, and oakmoss. The whole composition has a clarity and legibility that belies its list of rather dense materials, and it's this clarity, stripped of bells and whistles - what Ellena himself dubs his "little haiku" style - that is perhaps Déclaration's most noteworthy aspect. Nothing about the fragrance seems forced, contrived, or insincere. It's elegant, but with an outdoorsy air and a sly grin (the cumin and cedar skirt the edge of armpit sweatiness and serve as a nod to '50s classics like Eau d'Hermes, one of Ellena's oft-mentioned favorites). Despite its influence on the male fragrance market, Déclaration smells as singular as it must have when first released. Its velvety texture, hint of sweetness, and lack of leathery musk or patchouli also lend it plenty of unisex appeal. Women could easily wear Déclaration, and they should. It's a desert at high noon, in a bottle: arid, crisp, clear, and breathtaking. It nods to the past yet remains utterly, thrillingly of the moment. In other words, it's a modern classic.