Ménage a Trois: Angel and TDC Jasmin de Nuit

Today’s review is of the iconic Mugler Angel created in 1992 featuring notes of honey, vanilla, chocolate, caramel and patchouli (and some fruits/berries, depending on where you look up the notes.) Whether you love it or hate it, it was (and remains) an undeniable, unmistakeable, ground-breaking fragrance. We also review The Different Company Jasmin de Nuit, with notes of jasmine, star anise, cinnamon, cardamom, sandalwood and amber, for no other reason than we dithered and dallied in our decision-making regarding a man’s scent to review. But it’s undoubtedly worthy of a word or two.

Mugler Angel

• Patty: Whyyyyyy did I agree to this? Just stick razor blades in my coffee next time… I’d rather that than ever have Angel on my skin again. Years ago, I put on Angel, and was seized with a fit of snerfuffling (this is like when you spit out something really awful out of your mouth — think Tom Hanks in “Big” when he ate the caviar — but with your nose). And this is the weird thing about this scent. The actual notes don’t bother me, and if it were a room spray, candle, etc., I’d happily have it around, but having this gooey mess on my skin is just awful, and… it.won’t.come.off. Good thing I have a good set of choppers, I’m going to have to gnaw my arm off now.
• March: One of the joys of being a mother of four is that I have, with each child, experienced the magic moment when they throw up their Easter candy. Angel evokes for me – literally – the smell of chocolate vomit. It is the smell of 18 Cadbury eggs, a hollow milk chocolate Peter Rabbit and a few marshmallow peeps dropped on an otherwise empty stomach before breakfast, with natural consequences. I´m aware this is not the prevailing viewpoint regarding Angel, and I´m prepared for some trash talk (Apres L´Ondee smells like gerbil pee!), but I am sorry to report that´s what I get when I smell Angel. Given the endless popularity of this scent, clearly I am a bonehead. Please don´t flame the blog on my account.
• Lee: I didn’t put this on my skin. In fact I never have. I’ll tell you why. I spent a large number of my formative 20something years in London. I used to catch the tube everywhere. It’s always warm and damp down there and you can feel the fungi start to grow in your pits if you wait too long for a train. I used to entertain myself by watching the little dun coloured mice run along beside the tracks, imagining their funny little nocturnal lives. That’s if the platform wasn’t crowded, because then my nose would take over as my chief sensory domain. Body odour, burgers, stale hair grease (how does fresh smell?), perfume. And the dominant force, striding ahead of the pack in all her glory throughout the whole of the 90s was Angel. She could slay any other smell at 20 paces. If she wasn’t busy mating with them. Angel and burgers and fries = nice babies monsters from hell. And she was omnipresent, no matter the season. A dark underground tunnel where the exits are blocked by heaving bodies is not the place to have your bronchioles close up. I choose to avoid her nowadays. She’s Lucifer’s own juice.

The Different Company Jasmin de Nuit

• Lee: Now, if the London Underground smelled like this, that place would be transformed into a bower of bliss. Naiads and dryads and other ads would nimbly caper across the platform, laughing merrily and singing hey nonny nonny. It’s gorgeous. A very pretty scent that goes on a gentle journey from floral (rather than indolic) jasmine, with a touch of zing and pinch of powder, to a spicy ambery mix. It’s more spice than flower, at least from an hour in. Give me sinful nocturnal blossom over heavenly wings, any day or night.
• Patty: There is nothing not to love here. That is all.
• March: I appreciate TDC fragrances more in theory than in practice. Mostly I don´t like the way they smell on me, although Bergamote and Bois d´Iris smell gorgeous on normal people, and I´m particularly terrified of Sel de Vetiver. My favorite is probably Rose Poivree, confirming any doubts you might have that I am, indeed, a bonehead. Somehow I seem to have missed Jasmin, which (and I´ll be checking this tonight) I believe our local niche perfumer doesn´t stock. Now this one is working on me. Jasmine is a tough note. It´s such an ass-kicker; what are you going to put with it that can stand up to The Force? I have a particular loathing for “jaznilla” (does Scentzilla have a copyright on that word?), that unfortunate confluence of jasmine and vanilla that can produce a nauseatingly sweet result. This scent is a completely different way of looking at jasmine: it toys with jasmine´s indolic aspect (that slightly-rotten note of skank) by enrobing it in cardamom and cinnamon (the main spices I smell), although there might be a dab of pepper in there, and the anise is very subdued (a good thing, in my view.) The drydown is less sweet and more subtle than a typical jasmine soliflore — it makes me think of a milky, jasmine-scented dessert — with just a whisper of sandalwood. Wow, I do go on, don’t I?