According to Youtube perfume fanatic Katie Puckrik, Angel is “drama in a bottle”, and as someone who has always found the dramatic somewhat of a turn on, I was intrigued...to say the least. The notes are listed as bergamot, helional, fruit, honey, vanilla, chocolate, caramel and patchouli which, to me, sounds like an extremely odd blend for a fragrance which is marketed as a classic feminine. Of course the fruits, the honey, the vanilla, the chocolate and the caramel all match up with the image of stereotypical girlish sweetness complete with high pitched giggles and marshmallow hued puff pastry frocks, but when a perfumer decides to dabble with the dry, earthiness of patchouli in a scent, they certainly aren’t looking to create just the next simple, feminine fruity floral. In the latest ad campaign for Angel, Naomi Watts, draped in a feathered baby blue gown, strolls out onto an opulent balcony and gazes across a city far below, glowing like a sea of fireflies. As aforementioned, this image exemplifies lightness and classic femininity, but if this is what you expect from that first giddy little spritz of the juice, be prepared for a very rude awakening.
When I first applied Angel I was, to be brutally honest, horrified. Instead of the misty, clean whisper I was anticipating, Angel introduced itself with a thick, heavy bawl of smoked fruit. All I can grasp when I first smell the fragrance is ripe red berries sprinkled over a fillet of smoked mackerel. I really am revolted and I challenge any self respecting human not to be. This repulsive niff is potent, too, and certainly travels. I simply can’t escape it and boy, do I want to. In case you find my condemnation of Angel’s first moments as a hideous olfactory car crash overly harsh, try it. It’s weighty, heady and horribly smothering, it has structure, but what is that if the resulting scent is sickening?
After the initial painful introduction, it takes me around two hours to begin finding anything positive in Angel’s composition. When the fragrance begins to change shape, I find the vanilla growing in stature with the smoky overtone still lingering but the volume sliding downward by the second. What came cantering in, guns blazing, is now a lame horse and within this third hour the smokiness will have limped away to a quiet demise. Now, perhaps it is Angel’s design, perhaps it’s my own psychosomatics, but although the smoky richness has well and truly died by this point it still seems to leave a whisper that melds all the other remaining notes together. Am I just imagining the lingering smoke? Is my brain simply clinging to the smouldering depth that Angel blasted me with when I first spritzed? Perhaps, but it’s a testament to the art of perfumery and, more specifically, the genius of Angel’s creator, Olivier Cresp, that the scent can remain in memory and continue to shape the other notes.
The vanilla drydown feels accomplished. After half an hour of this silky, quite cool vanillic base the remaining sweet notes begin to creep out from their hiding places. The caramel presents itself as a different facet of the vanilla in that it is influenced by the vanilla and provides a palpable sweetness that remains perfectly dry rather than rendering down to a gag inducing syrup. The chocolate hits the blend here too and, unlike many other fragrances, it isn’t a bitter dark undertone. This is the kind of sweet kick of chocolate that could send a five year old into an extreme sugar high. Interestingly, even at the point when it reaches temple aching sugariness, Angel still doesn’t slip into tween-town. Olivier Cresp has managed to craft the fragrance so carefully that it can be toothsomely sweet whilst still maintaining it’s adulthood throughout.
Angel is a scent the highlights the art of perfumery. Every stage in the perfumes lifespan is just a chapter in the overarching story, and although sometimes personal tastes will not confer and traditionalists may take offence, it is undeniable that Angel is an expertly crafted creation. Personally, I will not be purchasing this perfume, and there are several reasons for this. The first and most fundamental is that I simply can’t stomach the top notes. Secondly, although very pretty and well built, the drydown is just not my style. That said, I wholly appreciate the skill and thought that has gone into making Angel the bizarre masterpiece that it is.
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