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.