Funny Name, Funny Countdown, Cool Bottle

Thierry Mugler is releasing another A*Men flanker this summer, hilariously called "Pure Wood," which immediately brings morning boners to mind. When you take a look on the Mugler web site, you find a grim countdown clock ticking off the seconds until the release time. When there's all zeros across the board, bottles of Pure Wood will spring from the Earth and fall from splitting tree trunks into everyone's yard. It's coming, folks. Pure Woodiness. Get ready.

The thing I like most about this fragrance concept is the bottle. Mugler encases most of its A*Men fragrances in matte rubber, usually dark grey or brown, and they're kind of a pain to use because the atomizer isn't touch sensitive, and requires extra downward force to disperse a decent spray. Some guys make it a point to cut the rubber off the bottle for that reason, but the wood-textured case on Pure Wood, framing an amber star, looks pretty cool to me. I own the original A*Men and a little bit of B*Men, both of which I like, and I've also spent some time with the reissue of Pure Malt, also very nice. Mugler has made a fan out of me. I'll be checking in on the Final Countdown in the coming weeks. When you consider it though, "Pure Wood" promises little more than A*Men's already woody coffee/patchouli structure embellished with designer-grade "woods" aroma chemicals, which will probably amount to your standard masculine woody amber. Given that it's an already woody scent within a wood-themed flanker, and the hundredth A*Men flanker, it's doubly redundant. If that's even possible.

It's come to the point where Mugler's A*Men flankers are feeling tired, and are even sounding a bit strained off the tongue (say "Pure Wood" out loud and try not to crack up). I sense that they should begin to rethink their line. Releasing flanker after flanker gets tiresome for consumers. The day does come for even the most die-hard A*Men fan where an original fragrance is more desirable than another iteration of an 18 year-old scent, especially when most of those iterations serve only to remind of how superior the first is.

B*Men (Thierry Mugler)

B*Men smells like something Annick Ménardo would have thrown together in the nineties, its synthetics playing off each other quite nicely in a Xeryus Rouge-like fashion (it does not smell like XR, though), their harmony sweet enough to make you forget that very few of the scent's many facets are from nature. There's also quite a bit of licorice/anise to be found in this Mugler creation, which for me is a plus and a minus; anisic notes are fine by me in moderation, but balance is key, and B*Men's anise seems a bit heavy-handed and, well, heavy. In other words, I get the licorice elements loud and clear, but I don't smell any contrast in the structure. There are no prominent sweet notes (the caramelized milkiness of A*Men is too subtle here), and that ghastly tarry patchouli accord from A*Men is nowhere to be found. B*Men is simply a blast of anise over a polite, kitchen-spiced cedar/rhubarb/vetiver/patchouli accord, the notes of which wedge tightly, but quietly.

Yes, I do smell a bit of a rhubarb-like note in B*Men, which is a unique feature of this fragrance. You don't find rhubarb in much, and when I smell B*Men, I'm immediately reminded of the strawberry rhubarb pies my friend's mom would make when we were kids. It's a nice association, and I have to wait out the licorice-over-damp-Maxwell House top note to get to it. B*Men's top is nice, very crisp and cool in an unassuming way, and unlike its predecessor, it smells balmy and inviting. This fragrance is nothing if not extremely wearable. Hazelnut makes an appearance about forty-five minutes into the drydown, and from there the usual suspects assemble on my skin - transparent (not dirty) patchouli, and a pleasant woodiness via cedar and rooty vetiver. The overall effect is strangely unorthodox and familiar, the paradoxical interplay of unconventional notes in a painstakingly "Macho" composition that recalls typical powerhouse ferns and chypres of the eighties and early nineties.

Yet B*Men isn't really "Macho" in any way, due to its politeness. The volume here is firmly entrenched five or six stops beneath Spinal Tap eleven. You can apply B*Men with a generous hand and not kill your co-workers. Type "A" personalities gravitate to the aggressive gravitas of A*Men; type "B" personalities, those who consciously underplay their role in life, may prefer the understated B*Men by a wide margin. I have to hand it to Thierry Mugler here - the two are related to each other by having a few of the same notes, but each one was made for the person who actively dislikes its counterpart, and they truly are polar opposites. If you hate A*Men, B*Men stands a good chance with you. I happen to love love A*Men, and guess what? B*Men is not for me. Am I a type "A" personality? Not really, except in regards to perfume. When I wear something, I want you to know it, and the sooner the better. While it is certainly no shrinking violet, B*Men says, "Hold that thought, and smell me later."

A*Men Pure Malt (Thierry Mugler)

This review is for the recent reissue of Pure Malt, not the original. I approached this one thinking I was in for an interesting twist on the original A*Men. When I see the word "malt" associated with a perfume, I immediately think of single malt scotch, which is known for having a very aromatic-woody smell. Memories of eighteen year-old Talisker get stirred up, and expectations skyrocket. I should know better - Pure Malt has nothing to do with scotch's complex, turpentine-painted driftwood, and everything to do with fruity, cheap-smelling malt liquor. Malt liquor is a lot like beer, except it has a slightly higher alcohol content, and it's usually a bit sweeter in flavor than your average ale or lager, due to the higher percentage of fermentable sugars used to make it. This lends malt liquor a somewhat sticky, sugary odor. You can smell the hops, but malt liquor is usually cruder than beer, because the cereals comprising its wort are cheaper. Mixed in with the sugar and hops are spicy, sometimes overtly fruity off-notes. I wouldn't call the scent of malt liquor "complex" or "interesting," but it's distinctive.

For Mugler to base an A*Men flanker on it is a little strange to me. Why opt for the cheap malt, when single malt scotch is so much better? The nose of an aged single malt often has very rich, dry, rooty aromas, usually with a profound peat note smothered in salty terpenes and smoked woods. A good single malt is a complex perfume unto itself, begging to be reinterpreted by perfumers. Pure Malt really doesn't offer any of that, and simply smells apple-like and beer-sweet for a couple hours, before seguing into a nondescript vanilla and tonka base. I like how it smells, and it's certainly pleasant to wear, but far from interesting. Sillage is especially weak for a Mugler scent, which is another demerit. I'll stick to the original A*Men, as this version is too "safe" for me. For an idea of how a peat note is supposed to smell, check out Patrick by Fragrances of Ireland.

A*Men (Thierry Mugler)

Somewhere inside every man is an imprisoned and carefully stifled woman. She's stronger in some more than others, but she's there, tucked behind everything else, waiting for the darkness of night to peek out, and see what's hers. She's quiet; for most of us she's a silent passenger, and many a poor boy lives his entire life not even realizing she's there. For those of us who suspect we're not alone, her song is gentle, but ever-present, its lilting words bearing a warning, a message, a desperate plea for release, or a threat to be silenced, lest consciousness be touched by its verse and pushed into the seas of confusion. Life has meaning with and without her, but without her there is no man.

Some smart-ass working for Thierry Mugler in the nineties knew all that. It was the same smart-ass who came to Mugler himself with a fully fleshed-out draft of A*Men, with curled lips twitching in a barely-there smirk of pride as his boss smelled the stuff, and exhaled in some kind of olfactory Nirvana. The fragrance has the ability to teleport its wearer to a place where rules, and straight lines in general, are all bent gleefully out of shape. For a heterosexual man to wear A*Men and not feel a twinge from his inner lady friend would mean his denial and fear runs deeper than his worst nightmare could ever reach, for this fragrance does a weird primitive dance along every cerebral nerve, and summons various emotions from the depths (bisexual men may take to it with greater ease). There's a bit of gluttony that rises up, thanks to the seriously edible minty-chocolately coffee accord, which features decadent edgings of caramel and spice. I find a few evil impulses wash over me whenever I wear A*Men, the sort of evil Vlad the Impaler might have known, as if I want someone to approach me, attempt to have their way with me, and then realize their action has somehow sealed their doom. 

The far drydown arrives about two hours in, its smooth warmth full of sweetness, patchouli, rich amber, and edible notes that toast the air. It becomes a feminine perfume that straddles two territories: the fizzy smell of sugary-sweet gourmandite tartiness, and the earthy, bitter snarl of a mature woman with a seductively rough side. Spliced down the center is an ungodly tar note, which marries the two perfectly and nudges A*Men's credibility as a masculine just barely back onto the page. But the notes aren't really important. A*Men smells a bit disturbing at first, an incredibly potent and heady burst of peppermint and lavender mixed with a concentrated semblance of the edible notes to disperse later, but when all of that settles down, the magnet is switched on, and everyone within a twelve foot radius of your body is, for better or worse, in significant danger. Ultimately though, wearing A*Men is an invitation to the wearer, to acknowledge that smelling edible in a feminine way is holistic and honest, even for a man. Whether or not he chooses to embrace this expression of feminine masculinity is entirely up to him.

Angel EDP (Thierry Mugler)

Gourmands are, for lack of a better word, difficult. The "foody" exercise can be taken to such extremes that there are few companies capable of reining things in. It seems there is no limit to how obscenely a scent can mimic fruit, candy, sugar. Step into any Bath and Body Works, and you're immediately assaulted by the full range of gourmandom, with berries, caramels, vanillas, even whole pies (apple is especially popular) splashing you in the face with their cavity-inducing charms. I'm convinced that today's teenage girl would be lost without a wardrobe that makes her smell like a walking See's.

What started it all? I can't be bothered to find out. I do know that Thierry Mugler is largely to blame. Angel was one of the game-changing '90s perfumes that set all the dusty chypres and orientals aside to make room for sweetness, and lots of it. In 1991, just one year before Angel's release, the market was crowded with losing bids for the future of perfumery. Things like Lauder's Spellbound and Cardin's Choc weren't exactly inspiring, or inspired. Dior's Dune was popular, but oddball, its transcendence something only time could qualify. Instant breakthroughs were all but nonexistent.

Then came Mugler and Angel, his sugar bomb. Sweetness, quite suddenly, became all the vogue. I've smelled it on many people, but they've mostly been adult women well beyond their teenage years. I attribute this to the distinct tremor of patchouli that radiates from its saccharine core. In fact, for its first five minutes on skin, the patchouli pushes past the other fuzzier notes and makes its presence very well known. Eventually the sweet notes take over with honey, pink berry, vanilla, and white chocolate sweeping the earthiness aside, the olfactory equivalent of the dessert table in a Viennese hotel.

Mugler's fragrances are mostly unisex. There's nothing about them that pins them to one gender. The same can't be said about their fashion, however. Alien smells out of time and place with its egregiously synthetic bombast, while Womanity smells like something that would have been better left forgotten in some '70s porno. Angel managed to survive its zeitgeist and stay relevant in the 21st century, smelling just as new and wearable as it did twenty years ago. If that's not transcendence, I don't know what is.

Womanity (Thierry Mugler)

Womanity, like Azzaro Chrome and One Man Show, is one of those weird conceptual fragrances that throws tact to the wind. If it were a classically composed fragrance with little or no concept behind it, I would dismiss Womanity as another fruity scent for young women and leave it at that. After all, it is called Womanity. What the hell am I supposed to do with a pink perfume in a godawful bottle with the godawful name Womanity? And how many times can I write the fake word Womanity in this review? (So far five.)

Womanity, as it turns out, isn't just another fruity scent. It opens with a spiced fig accord, very sweet, and grows saltier as it dries. The salty notes are dense and lend the fragrance an aquatic dimension that feels a bit unbalanced and out of place in the earlier stages of the drydown. As time passes, Mugler's concept becomes abundantly clear, and is a bit of a shock - this perfume is meant to resemble the musk of female genitalia. The fig creates a clean, showered, and soaped backdrop for the familiar salty, sometimes slightly fishy scent of a healthy woman. The milky sweetness of the base has a sweaty effect, with everything winding up very funky, salty, and soapy-musky in the end.

I must admit, this scent makes me a little uncomfortable. It smells unisex to me, but the effort put into executing this particular concept results in a very strange and erotic fragrance - for a man. And frankly, I don't see how it would register as usable beyond the short social tether of rave club and bedroom use. Any guy who wears it to work has a dirty and somewhat twisted perspective on things, if I may say so myself. It's definitely not a date scent, either. If you really know what you're smelling here, and you've smelled it enough, it's like contemplating hardcore pornography as a desktop wallpaper in the office - an obvious pass. And for the ladies . . . well, words elude me. I have no clue why a woman would want to smell literally like her, um, womanity parts.

Use Womanity at your own risk. I guess it works and smells pretty good, but it definitely stretches the boundaries of good taste. And the bottle is, beyond a doubt, the most hideous thing I've ever seen.

Alien (Thierry Mugler)

Mugler's perfumes share the distinction of being the rare kind that one can enjoy without even trying - all you need to do is look at the bottles! Whoever is on the Mugler design team can be applauded for having very, ahem, unique visual sensibilities. It's impossible to walk past a Mugler counter and not pause to marvel at the array of unorthodox shapes. 

For some reason Alien stands apart, eclipsing even the bizarrely compressed polyhedron star of Angel. Its upright flask is a cross between a remote control and a Dung Beetle, and seems to challenge every conceivable assumption one might make about the juice housed within. The only assumption safe to make is that confusion, intimidation, and sheer awe were the intended reactions here.

I wish I could give the fragrance a score that corresponds with my appreciation of its container, but alas, it cannot be. First to hit my skin is a rocket booster of highly synthetic (and oddly sour) jasmine mixed with violet-like sweet notes. The concoction seems to be a dense blend of patented ionones (Dihydro Ionone Beta? Jasmatone?), aldehydes, and detergent musks that have endured several passes with a K2 meter.

After an hour of head-splitting blare, the ensemble settles into a milder and woodier base, with the floral sweetness still shouting from the sidelines. My immediate impression of this evolution is that it is the perfect accessory for someone who uses his or her naked body for money, which covers everyone from strippers and prostitutes to art school models for Life Drawing 101. This is sexual but heady, something that asserts a level of authority over the natural world. It's Red Door for the 21st century.

It's not for me, that's for sure. Ten minutes of uninvited wear on my skin would be enough to send me screaming for the hills. Alien's appeal to young women wishing to push the social envelope is evident, and I can recommend it to anyone who is tired of the same-old, same-old. I'll stick with more human fare, thank you very much.

Mugler Cologne (Thierry Mugler) and Original Vetiver (Creed)

This is pretty serious. I finally got around to trying Mugler Cologne. Yesterday my girlfriend and I stopped at Macy's so she could get something, and I waited for her at the fragrance counter. Two of the SA's there were trying to hawk Nautica, Polo, Armani, the usual crapola. Polo Blue (really? still trying to sell guys on this?), Armani Code & Code Sport (both utterly useless), and I didn't even let the Nautica girl get within five feet of me. 

The other lady grew increasingly frustrated by my disinterest. The nicest thing she gave me was a mug of coffee beans to "clear out the nose."

When she finally gave up, I wandered over to the shelf with the testers. At this point my sniffer was already tired, so I wasn't going to try much else. But I wanted to see if they had anything special. Bleu de Chanel caught my eye (review pending), and so did Mugler Cologne. I've heard the rumors - Cologne and Original Vetiver are virtually the same scent. Rumors never mean much to me. I had to smell for myself. So I spritzed Cologne on my arm, waited a few seconds, and then dove in.

Surprise, surprise - Cologne smells almost exactly like Original Vetiver. Which is both dazzlingly good and wretchedly bad.

First the wretchedly bad: until this point, I'd always thought of Original Vetiver as the greatest green perfume. Whenever I wore OV, women would literally swoon. 

I wore it to work last year (I work at a school), and a teacher's assistant in the next classroom walked by, stopped dead in her tracks, and flat-out broke down on the scent. She had to know exactly what I was wearing. She then waved another female co-worker over to smell me. 

The second girl said "that's you? I was wondering what smelled so good!" Any time she saw me, she smiled and pulled the air over to her, saying "Mr. Smells-Good, gimme somma that goodness!" Dramatic? Maybe. But it was honest, and it was a clear signal that what I was wearing was working. Despite my penchant for fragrance, that doesn't happen very often.

As if this wasn't enough, I wore OV to a family barbeque that summer, and the woman whom I'm now dating smelled it on me. Months later, she asked me, "what was that stuff you had on at the barbeque? It was sex in a bottle." That pretty much sealed the deal - Original Vetiver was my Paradisi Parfum. But now I see that it is matched by another scent, one that came before it, and its cache is gone.

Another problem is that OV is Creed, and therefore absurdly expensive. I was lucky enough to get my 4 oz bottle at a deep discount, but counterfeiters have made me wary of gambling like that again. Creed's prices just went up another $10, putting a follow-up bottle of OV beyond my reach.

This is where the good comes in: I can now afford to smell like that again, only this time I'll be using the original fragrance, Thierry Mugler's fragrance. I no longer have to drop hundreds of dollars on the most modern, most cheerful, most green scent in the land. For a fraction of the cost, I can wear Cologne and emit that clean greenness that I love so much. Sure, my view on Creed's Millesime has changed, although I still love OV, and I've lost nothing in learning of its doppelganger.

There are, however, some differences between the two. First I'll break down Original Vetiver, as it's the more complex scent. Creed clearly wanted to flesh out Mugler's concept, make it more potent, more shimmery, and if possible, even greener. The citrus top notes are fast, sheer, and transition immediately into a lush heart of waving grasses, petitgrain, cool iris, and the light spice of ginger. A few hours later, the coolness of iris and spiciness of petitgrain allow the green notes to drift into a ginger-sweetened ambergris. 

The green never disappears - the grass notes merely step back, letting the ambergris glow through. There really isn't much of a vetiver component to OV, which is what draws the ire of many reviewers. Creed's excuse is that they're focusing on the grass instead of the root, which begs the question, why bother calling it vetiver at all? Why not call it Original Grass? Or if you want to get cute, Original Grasse? Regardless, the scent achieves an achingly beautiful effect of waving green grasses on a cool breeze. The ambergris enlivens the entire composition, and the iris and ginger balance the temperature somewhere between balmy and cold. Quite honestly, I think it's a masterpiece.

But it's not alone - Mugler Cologne is Alberto Morillas' creation, and it came three years before OV. Cologne opens with a more prominent citrus that Original Vetiver, with bergamot dominating. This dries into an accord of petitgrain and green notes. It's basically just green, green, green. But it isn't boring green. The petitgrain is illuminated by the strong bergamot, and the cis-3 Hexenol at Cologne's heart shows as a sweet green grass note. Unlike Original Vetiver, Cologne doesn't develop into an ambergris tincture, but instead slides into a more conventional neroli and white musk base. 

This detracts a little from its depth; Cologne's grass is merely there, while the grass in OV waves and lets hints of flowers, spice, and amber shine through. Also, the white musk in Cologne is something that can be found in a multitude of fragrances. I'm almost certain it's the same clean, semi-sweet musk that inhabits the base of Tommy Girl by Hilfiger, which is also a beautiful scent. So it's a nice musk, and I'm not averse to it, but it's nothing special. Still, Cologne manages to straddle the line between "clean" and "green" very well, and for an eau de toilette it has nice longevity and a very distinct character. Neroli and white florals fill in for Cologne where ginger, iris, and ambergris enliven Original Vetiver. The difference is that Mugler Cologne ends up smelling like the eau de toilette version of Original Vetiver. It has equal panache, and the scent profile is identical. But there's a bit of a difference in the details. One scent is definitely simpler than the other.

My feeling is that Cologne is suitably close enough to Original Vetiver to make owning and wearing the latter pointless. Why bother dropping all the dollars on OV when I'm not buying ginger, iris, and ambergris? Those are nice notes, and they work magic in this particular Creed, but I buy OV to smell green. I'm not looking for a multi-faceted experience there. Mugler Cologne delivers the exact same green, minus the frills. It's tenacious, well-balanced, and fresh. It's what I need.

Guess I have to hand it to Thierry Mugler. His 2001 release presages Creed's 2004 perfume, and obviously Olivier Creed is a fan of Cologne. I'm not sure why he chose to create such a blatant rip-off, but it doesn't matter. Both fragrances are genius, and one is much more attainable than the other. Perhaps one day I'll own both. Better lock up your daughters.