Angel vs. Chanel No. 5 and Observations on Classic Scents

Why do the French know so much about perfume? Last month's poll about favorite perfume pitted Angel against Chanel No. 5 and resulted in an exact match.

Chanel No. 5 is a classic perfume. Created in the 1920s, it has been on the market nonstop since then and continues to wow perfume snobs and drugstore divas alike.

Angel is a much newer arrival, but it is currently the number one scent in France. Which brings me to why the French know so much about perfume. They consistently seem to create the winners (both Chanel No. 5 and Angel originated in France) and know the difference between an ordinary scent and a classic.

More than half a century separates Chanel No. 5 from Angel and if you are familiar with these two fragrances, you know that they are worlds apart. Chanel No. 5 is a "sparkling floral" with notes of a then brand-new synthetic molecule known as aldehyde.

Coco Chanel was decidedly anti-green in her sentiments. She wanted her signature scent to smell like something completely un-natural although she meant "un-natural" in the sense that she wanted a man-made, synthetic, "created" scent, much in the way art is a "created" thing. Take a bunch of sunflowers and put them in a pitcher on a table and you have nature. Let Van Gogh paint them, and you have art. Coco Chanel wanted art in a bottle.

Aldehyde smells like sparkles. That's the best way to put it. There is an effervescent quality to Chanel No. 5 that transcends and even dominates the floral notes. Coco Chanel also wanted a perfume that was the antithesis of what women were wearing at the time. In her day, perfume was heavily floral or spicy and it came in fat little cut-glass bottles with poofy atomizors. Ever notice the Chanel No. 5 bottle? It's a sleek rectangle with no ornamentation. Coco Chanel saw it as modern, the world sees it now as her trademark.

Angel is a perfume by Thierry Mugler. It is also highly original. Monsieur Mugler appears less quoteable than Coco Chanel (who was like the Oscar Wilde of the perfume world) but he was clearly striving to create something that was vastly different than the dominant scents on the market. Mugler is a man of our generation, so he knew all about the fresh scents, the fruity florals, the sugary notes, as well as the classic greens, aldehydes, and florals. It has been said of Angel by Mugler and others that it was an attempt to evoke childhood, but that seems a stretch.

What Angel is what an attempt to go past what perfume had been. Whether or not he succeeded is a matter for great perfume philosophers to ponder, but he clearly created a whole new category to scent. A whiff of Angel is unmistakable. It's different.

Like Chanel, he packaged this creation in an astonishing bottle. The first time I saw a bottle of Angel, I was rather amazed that it did not stand upright as I supposed perfume bottles ought to, but was forced to lay supine on the dresser. You can buy a contraption to hold it upright, but I did not do that. It's a charming bottle to contemplate and it fits nicely in the hand, but it is startlingly different from other scents.

Changing Tastes

Why do our tastes change? Collectively, we have seen major transitions in the perfume tastes of the world. The world's first cologne (Germany's fabled 4711, still around today) is a citrus; then the world fell in love with florals (also still around today). In the 1920s, adelhydes came into vogue (still around today). By the 1950s, we were all about Orientals. Remember Youth Dew? I bought some Youth Dew last year because I like it but it seemed downright nostalgic. It was almost olfactory history. That kind of scent--deeply Oriental, spicy, strong, sultry, almost dark--is totally out of vogue.

Today, our perfumes smell like food (Sugar and Lemon Sugar by Fresh, Pink Sugar by Aquolina, Almond Cookie by Carol's Daughter, and so on). The trend toward fruity florals is very popular and sometimes we leave out the floral part.

But why does this change? Does it have to do with our collective fashion sense? One would think that perfumes are "invisible fashion" and that people would feel freer to indulge in what suited them rather than the "in" color or hot new style. Is our love affair with food spilling over into fragrance?

While I was pondering this, I had an experience I've heard about but never had personally. A scent that I previously liked and wore (albeit occasionally--I have a pretty big perfume rotation going so I don't often wear the same scent over and over) came up again in the rotation. Without even thinking, I sprayed some on.

Yuck! I suddenly wanted to get it off! I have never had that kind of negative response to a perfume that I previously liked. I'm wondering whether our "nose" changes with our physical condition, diet, health status, and medications we might be taking. Or whether it's a taste thing. This scent seemed suddenly too powdery and there was an odd clunker note in it. Do we lose our preferences for powdery scents the way we might suddenly get tired of our black clothes or our Burberry purse?

This is a tuberose. It's one of those white florals that can get misused. In fact, when I first heard that Estee Lauder (in the person of her daughter) was going to unveil a new perfume called Tuberose Garden, well I was filled with a desire to yawn.

I mean it sounded ordinary. And for some reason my initial response as I thought, "What does a perfume like Tuberose Garden smell like?" Because my answer was that it would be a cookie-cutter fragrance veering in the direction of little-old-lady scent.

Oh, WAS I WRONG. It's a wonderful scent, glorious. Everything that is good and right and fine about white florals is in this scent. I like it better each time I use it and I loved it the first time. I'm not normally the kind of person who would shop for a perfume that boasted tuberose as an ingredient, so that's why I want to warn you.

This stuff is way better than it sounds. In fact, that's my only issue with this new scent. It has kind of an old-fashioned, overly humble name.

It reminds me of New Orleans, not the post-Katrina place, but the way it was if you lived in one of the residential neighborhoods around the Garden District and you went strolling around on a summer night. It's hot in New Orleans in the summer, even at night, and the humidity makes the air seem fatter than other places. New Orleans is green but not in the modern way; it's green in the ancient way. Even in the city itself, everything is thick jumble of trees and vines and plants. Even the sidewalks are lumpy with tree roots and grass and scraggly flowers trying to burst through them. The humidity turns the darkness thick, so it feels almost like you're wearing it, and the smells of honeysuckle and other people's perfume and rose gardens and plants all get tangled up. You hear some kids off in the distance, laughing too loudly, and you hear a buzzing of insects in the vines overgrowing a porch, but what overwhelms you most of all are all of those flowers and plants in the stillness.

That's what it smells like.

OK, I'll stop now. But it's really what it reminds me of, in the best possible way.

Sniffapalooza

There really are some great resources online now for men and women of fragrance. One of them is a group that sponsors events for people who love niche fragrances. The group is called Sniffapalooza and you have to check them out at http://www.sniffapalooza.com/.

The next event is in March. It's called Spring Fling and it mainly involves soaking up the sights and smells (in a perfumey kind of way) of New York City. You may still be able to get in.

Sniffapalooza also goes to Europe and has a trip to Florence coming up this summer.

Perfume isn't cheap but the Sniffapalooza events are very reasonably priced. It's worth checking out! I'm going to New York this spring for my first Sniffapalooza.

Niche Fragrances

Niche fragrance is the term used to talk about scented delights offered by small companies, independent perfumers, and just plain olfactory artists. Most perfume sold in this country is produced by large manufacturers. Now contrary to a lot of people, I have nothing against big manufacturers or small manufacturers or anybody out to make an honest buck. But the deal with a big company making perfume is that they have to appeal to a broad range of consumer tastes.

A niche perfumer does not have the strength or distribution network to stock the shelves of every company across the country. Avon can get into a lot of houses, Estee Lauder can get on every department store perfume counter, but a small perfumer ... well, he or she has to struggle to stay in business. But the benefit of these niche purveyors is that they are more artistically free. They don't have to make a perfume that everybody from your 87-year-old great-grandmother to the bored teenager in science class can all agree on.

That's what happens in commercial industries. It's not so much that everyone loves your product. It's just that you hit on the product that the fewest people hate. You create something that is acceptable.

Niche perfumers, on the other hand, create things that a handful of people can love. But niche perfume is a bit tricky. Since niche perfumeries do not go for mainstream tastes, they can come up with some real odd stuff. You may not want a man's cologne that smells like lilacs or a woman's scent that is made with coffee.

The element of discernment adds a real appeal to the connossieur. Not only do niche perfume mavens find niche perfumers who make exquisite and rare fragrances, they get to sharpen their nostrils (so to speak) by deciding what they like and what they don't.

Interested in niche perfumes? There are lots of companies out there. You can share your own favorites with me. It seems like there are new ones to discover all of the time. Some of my favorites are Neil Morris (nielmorrisfragrances.com) and Bond No. 9 (bondno9.com) but there are tons more!

Men's Perfume, Women's Perfume and Other Myths

One of the big trends in perfume now is the ambivalent fragrance, the scent that could be for men but might be for women. Back in the 1920s and through the perfume heyday of the 1980s, the fragrance departments were pretty much split on gender lines. Women wore My Sin by Lanvin or Chanel No. 5 and men wore English Leather. There was a pretty strict idea about what scents were feminine, which ones were masculine, and even the uneducated nose could tell them apart.

That all changed some time in the 1990s, as more and more hip scents entered that "green" zone between the male and female aisles of the perfume counter. Women were wearing fresh scents, men were wearing citrus and even subtle florals. Calvin Klein captured part of the feel when he released One.

We might think we're very trendy--inventing the unisex fragrance. Not quite. What was a recent invention was the opposite. The male/female distinction in perfumery is relatively new. In ancient times, scent was scent. Men wore florals. Women and men might very well dip into the very same cologne bottles.

Today, more men are experimenting with scents that might be considered decidedly feminine and not just because of the fancy foo-foo bottles. Florals and fruity scents once deemed very girly are finding their way (in subdued form, usually) into the male fragrance. Women are using more and more fresh and subtle fragrances.

But brave men are wearing women's classics and brave women, well, I don't know what brave women are doing. I doubt that they're slathering on Old Spice. But I think brave women are getting pretty comfortable with ambivalent scents, too.

Perfume Lover Goodies

Come visit our store on CafePress! Just click that link and you're there. It's a CafePress thing but we got some cool art designed. We've got a mug, a journal, a shirt, and a messenger bag. Also a clock that says, "So many fragrances, so little time."