Do you remember Posse? It’s 2010 and Mugler has been riding on its flankers game for a few years. Suddenly the buzz of a NEW Mugler perfume coming. The ads arrive in Aussie magazines long before bottles appear. International flight attendants have the first bottles, bought at duty frees around the world. How we all envied their sophistication. Suddenly, the clubs are full of the smell of Womanity. You could smell the cool kids wearing it on the streets, so much of it. A deluge of fragrance that harks back to his last super blockbuster Angel. A new scent of belonging had arrived.
Womanity by Thierry Mugler 2010
Mugler site gives these featured accords:
Fig (tree, leaf, fruit), Wood, Caviar
My once pink juice is now golden and I love the contrast with the very pewter colour of the bottles upper section. That face, tribal motifs and the chain and ring linking all women and femininity in the city are just as eye-catching and spectacular as when I first saw the bottle. Timeless and inspired by so many eras. Prehistoric, Deco, 1980s and early 2000s and probably dozens more but this is what I see.
Wearing my bottle today I’m loving the almost linear feel of briny figs with a dark woody undertow. I smell of both piquant entree and luscious dessert. It’s a heady, explosive fragrance that completely envelops me, with only two chest spritzes. I float. Completely unattached from the earth and reality. Drifting in the warm summer sea looking at the stars and smelling the poaching of figs in spiced wine and imagining them being served with sweetened marscapone.
Sure, Womanity is super feminine but it smells so good on the guys. Longevity and dispersion are atomic levels. You have to make the decision that THIS is how you’re going to smell till you bathe. I’m so OK with that.
Patty wrote about Womanity when it first came out.
Surrender To Chance has samples.
Did you ever wear Womanity?
Portia xx
Womanity – my fragrant nemesis. Gimme the choice between ELDO SM & Womanity to wear? It would be the SM everytime.
Womanity smells of bilge & vomit, like a drunk puked into the harbour after a skinful of Blue Wicked alcopops & it matured in the weather, human ambergris if you will.
I still suffer the olfactory scars
O M G! Tell us how you really feel Alityke. Ha Ha ha!
A visceral experience and I’m glad it was you and not me.
Also, hilarious to a casual bystander, so thank you.
Portia xx
I remember this! I think that bottle is sooooo cool. I don’t remember if I tried it — possibly not (like some others here, I was scarred by Angel.) I probably considered trying it, at least, because I remember being on a fig bender around then. I smiled at the warning about longevity — one of those fragrances you will not be changing your plans for once it’s on!
Heya March,
I’m surprised you didn’t if fig was your jam at the time. You’d not have forgotten the experience.
Oh yes, half life of uranium.
Portia xx
I remember it coming out but I was so scarred by Angel I didn’t. Then I read Patty’s review (caviar and pop rocks? I think not..) and that sealed the deal. Or the crypt. But not you make me want to try it.
Hey Tom
I love how we all have such different reactions to Womanity. It’s kind of an extreme version of what really good, controversial perfume is. Scents that bring all our past into them. Yet also are themselves.
I’m so happy the discussion has been this robust.
Portia xx
Here’s the fruit + dead fish scent that we were talking about in theory — brought to vivid technicolor life! That briny note read as dead fish and seaweed on my skin, mixed with the fruity top notes…repulsive! I initially saw the bottle and was attracted. But it smelled like a teen boy’s rancid dorm room on me, complete with dirty sweat socks. No thank Thierry Mugler! But a big thanks to you Portia for this walk down memory lane! 🙂
OMG! DinaC, thank you for that ultra vivid, visceral reaction. It was so good.
I’m sitting in a hotel breakfast laughing out loud.
So good
Portia xx
I never tried Womanity because ANGEL! (Sweatergawd I still have PTSD ) … but I did adore his clothes. Back in the day I had a Mugler suit ( along with a Jimmy Gamba) that was spectacular. I was in thrall to his closures- those gorgeous spears!!!)
Fabulous Musette.
I had a Mugler catsuit. It was heaven
Hug
Portia xx
A… catsuit!!! Swooon!
Yeah, it was very cool, I loved it to shreds, then gave it to another queen who continued wearing it till it completely fell apart.
Uh, no, never sampled as far as I know and thus never wore. I’m all in for fig but this just sounds … Caviar? seriously?
Ha! Cinnamon, you’re hilarious. I don’t get caviar. Promise
Portia xx
I’ve never tried it. There were so many bad reviews on it, plus it has a caviar note which scared me away.
Honestly, it doesn’t smell like caviar to me Maya. Briny figs and sweet soft cheeee.
Beautiful
Portia x
Womanity is one of those fig-and-salt ideas that either clicks instantly or never does—curious whether Portia’s revisit reads more seaside-fig on skin now or still tips into that sticky-sweet fog people argued about back then. Anyone wearing it as a cool-morning scent this autumn, or does it only work warmer?
Hey Ana
I never got the super sticky sweetness you refer to.
It’s spring here. Hot days and chilly nights. Wears beautifully in both
Portia x