Story of an Iconic Perfume: Angel by Thierry Mugler
Angel has become, over the years, an essential of modern perfumery, a captivating best-seller at the origin of a new lineage of olfactory category.
However, its fame was not achieved immediately. How did Thierry Mugler manage to make Angel one of the most prized perfumes in the world? What makes Angel so addictive and so particular?
Who Is Thierry Mugler?
Thierry Mugler, born on 21 December 1948 and died on 23 January 2022, is a French designer who marked the world of fashion in multiple ways: stylist, couturier, director, photographer and perfume creator.
As a child, he was a dreamer and a loner, tirelessly losing himself in his thoughts while watching the immensity of the starry sky… and one star in particular, blue, shone in his eyes more than the others and seemed to call him. So much so that he would make it his trademark, representing stars in all his artistic projects, and even tattooing on his body the famous, so characteristic Mugler star.
At fourteen, he joined the ballet of the Opéra du Rhin after 5 years of classical dance. From this experience he kept not only a developed talent for bodily expression, but also the sense of the aesthetics of the body that he would constantly want to showcase.
Then he took interior-design courses at the school of Decorative Arts in Strasbourg, which concretised his fervour for staging his fantastical shows.
Then came the moment when Thierry Mugler wanted to give an olfactory dimension to his world: the eau de parfum Angel was born.
Creation of the First Mugler Perfume
An Innovative Composition
Thierry Mugler’s ambitions at the beginning of the 1990s translated into the creation of a perfume, thanks to a famous, totally revolutionary and surprising formula for the time. He would say, “I want to make a fragrance so delicious that you’ll want to eat it.” A perfume that would disconcert at first, consumers being surprised by this gourmand fragrance of a new kind! A success that came into being thanks to a brilliantly conducted marketing method.
Indeed, he created the Cercle Mugler, a loyalty programme integrating customers into the privileged world of Angel. A programme offering advantages and gifts around the Angel perfume as purchases went on; loyalty was therefore rewarded with attentions reserved for members. Customers feeling favoured, pampered and completely under the charm of this new addictive fragrance talked about it around them… Word of mouth worked, and success finally established itself and inscribed Angel in the very restricted list of iconic perfumes.
This gourmand fragrance, which we owe to the great perfumer Olivier Cresp, is composed of sweet, addictive notes, with a base of vanilla and patchouli that is a classic oriental structure, but above all of an ingredient until then reserved for the food-flavouring sector: ethyl maltol. A compound that has a particular scent recalling the smell of funfairs with praline, candyfloss, caramel, which gives this particularity, this singularity to the perfume.
Olivier Cresp told L’Express: “I spent two hours talking with Thierry Mugler. He told me about the afternoon snacks he had at his grandmother’s, the madeleines he dipped in his chocolate, then the funfairs and the candyfloss.”
It took the perfumer nearly 600 trials to manage to develop the perfume as Thierry Mugler had dreamed it.
This completely broke the codes of the time and revolutionised the then still very classic perfume industry, so much so that a new olfactory category came into being thanks to Angel: that of gourmand perfumes.
Angel, a Unique Sensual Gourmand Perfume
Angel, a gourmand amber
The opening is juicy, a puff of citrus freshness. It is, according to Mugler, the celestial facet of the fragrance.
Then quickly come sweet, fruity notes carried by honeyed, milky, childlike, comforting accords. The alliance of praline, red fruits and passion fruit makes the whole gourmand—it is the delicious facet.
Finally, in the base notes, it is a ballet of sensual notes, ambered by vanilla and caramel, where cocoa, honey, heliotrope and patchouli blend. It is the voluptuous facet, giving the perfume this sensation of irresistible delight.
A dense, complex olfactory pyramid, which highlights the characteristics of a warm, sweet, childlike, sensual, mysterious and enveloping perfume.
A powerful perfume, recognisable among a thousand, like the Mugler fashion that strives to give woman the soul of a winner with a tender heart.
An olfactory comfort blanket in an era in search of reassurance—childlike, sexy on a skin you want to eat… and terribly addictive.
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An Iconic Star-Shaped Bottle
Not only is the composition of its perfume particularly original, but its bottle is a jewel in itself, star-shaped of course, made with an innovative technique in thick glass. Three years of research were necessary to arrive at the creation of this iconic star bottle.
The avant-gardism was pushed even further, since he innovated by creating a refill system called the “Fontaine Mugler” (Mugler Fountain), which consists of fighting against waste.
Thus, each owner of an Angel perfume can refill their bottle and participate, in a certain way, in an ecological responsibility—natural today, but which at the time presented Mugler as a visionary.
A Perfume Rewarded on the International Scene
Particularly well-conducted communication and personalities having collaborated with Mugler to present Angel made the perfume even more desirable. An immense success that translated into Angel’s ranking in the top 3 of the best-selling perfumes in France, and this for more than 20 years. The fragrance also distinguished itself through the prizes received on the international scene:
- Hall of Fame Award of the FiFi Awards of the Fragrance Foundation (2007)
- Feminine Hall of Fame Award at the Canadian Fragrance Awards (2010).
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