Angel*Men - Two Masculine Angels

by: Serguey Borisov

Luca Turin's famous phrase about perfumes as angels with no gender is difficult to dispute. Try to launch a feminine fragrance and men will wear it next day; call another fragrance masculine and women will quietly borrow it from their men very soon. The multigender nature of common perfumery is a challenge for the very few who would argue with that rationale. Thierry Mugler is one of them. The two stellar hits in his collection—Angel (1992) and Angel*Men (1996)—were always a couple of perfumes that embody hyper-femininity and ultra-masculinity, at least in their visual advertising.

Now the ultramasculine star Angel*Men (or A*Men) is going to give birth to two different perfume stars: the orange giant A*Men Ultra Zest and the white dwarf A*Men Pure Energy. Unfortunately, both supernovae will appear on the perfume horizon for only a brief time: they will be seen on the shelves only in 2015.

Orange giant A*Men Ultra Zest is claimed by its creators, Jacques Huclier and Quintin Bisch of Givaudan, to be an energy cocktail. A bright citrus burst of energy against the backdrop of the characteristic amber-caramel base of original A*Men at first sounds like a great partner for Coco Mademoiselle Chanel and the original feminine Angel. It would be nice to perform a blind test. Which way will blindfolded men turn given the question, “What smell do you find more appealing?” amongst competitorsA*Men Ultra Zest and Coco Mademoiselle Chanel?


The bright citrus flash hits the nose. Behind fragrant and spicy ginger, black pepper and mint, it's not easy to realize that the main role here belongs to sweet tangerines. The bright orange plastic bottle is devoted to them.

Further in the evolution of the A*Men Ultra Zest the fragrance perfectly highlights its main parts and stages: sweet and sour “citrus and licorice” candies; a transparent sweet licorice and bitter black coffee accord, which made us so fond of Yohji Homme; and finally, a traditional gourmand soft plastic amber—“the 21st century amber”—so characteristic of the original A*Men.

From the orange-ginger explosion of life energy to the purple relaxed complacency and comfort harem of soft amber, A*Men Ultra Zest passes all the evolutions in about an hour— I wonder who this new angel-man wants to become? A gigolo? A wealthy man of leisure? A crown prince? A man of the future, whose work will be fully dependent on robots?

Sometimes notes suddenly sprout and stand out from the soft polyethylene-like sillage, that of the camphor-wood patchouli note, or a fresh berry-like material, or a coumarin-vanilla chord, adding life and memories of the original Angel to the perfume. It seems that A*Men Ultra Zest is designed for those who did not overdose enough on powerful Angel Thierry Mugler in the 90s and for those who do not mind repeating that experience in a new stage of life. This new offspring of Angel shares so many genes with his great-grandmother, and looks much more like her than the other flankers of the A*Men family.

A*Men Ultra Zest Top notes: Bloody orange, Tangerine, Ginger and Mint; Heart notes: Cinnamon, Coffee and Black pepper; Base notes: Tonka beans, Patchouli and Vanilla

White dwarf A*Men Pure Energy does not resemble its sweet ancestors, great-grandmother Angel and great-grandfather Angel*Men. It smells more like the distant relatives of the fresh patchouli genealogic branch, that of Ice*Men, A*Men Summer Flash and A*Men Pure Shot—all these suntanned, sporty bon-vivants that inhabit all the tropical resorts, where the heat allows you to walk always barechested, where the water is clean and transparent, and alcohol is so expensive and delicious. Mint with sugar, gin with ice, sprinkled with spice powder, Iso E Super, a flower on the edge of the glass—these tropical fougères on the base of patchouli, coumarin and musk know a thing or two about refreshing cocktails! A freshly-laundered colorful shirt, wet hair right from the shower with some gel, all tan, some aromamaterial designed to resemble a sea breeze and the sprays of the surf. Nothing reminiscent of severe long-term workouts at the gym ... but the posture and muscles, of course.

Fragrance A*Men Pure Energy is intended to replace an identical A*Men Pure Shot, that we are invited to erase from memory as soon as possible along with its role model, a certain athlete from South Africa. It was just a bad example of cooperation—people are not so perfect as angels.

A*Men Pure Energy Top notes: Mint and Juniper berries; Heart notes: Cardamom and White pepper; Base notes: Patchouli and Sequoia.

Are you surprised that flankers still continue to be launched after all the negativity that was poured on them by perfume fans? Please, do no be. There's a scientific basis for it, and marketers take it into account as they primarily need to sell more perfume.


Each brand has serious reasons to be both new and constant. They need to ensure brand memorability and sales growth, keep loyal customers, return bygone ones and attract new ones, to be recognizable and consistent, so as not to scare off existing customers. You cannot imagine how many discussions marketers will have conducted on the topic of what should be changed, and what to keep. 
Constancy is very important for advertising effectiveness. All memorable logos and slogans were made that way by multiple repetitions of the same. Cognitive psychologists have found that the best learning takes place when new information is based on known, established ideas—the educational principle “from simple to complex” is based on this.

However, is it unclear why some people have found it so difficult to learn? Researchers from the Radboud University in Dutch Nijmegen measured the response of nerve cells to the familiar and to new (unknown) information. If the signal matches the expectations, the signal is not processed at all. Our brain just suppresses information that meets our expectations. Presented with the same information, the brain cells do not start working. That's the reason we do not pay attention to your own nose, although constantly see it with our own eyes—there's nothing new! Our nose works the same way with the smell of our house. In the same way, most car accidents happen on sections of a road that we know best. We stop paying attention to the road and our brains simply take the missing information from memory. When our hypothesis about the expected is confirmed, the brain shuts down, so as not to waste time and energy on what is already known. Hence, the new "signals" should be substantially new for buyers to notice.


In other words, old perfumes just get lost on the shelves without new parts, as long as they are so familiar and well-known. Only novelty opens the door to new knowledge and new purchases.


Flankers such as A*Men Pure Energy and A*Men Ultra Zest Thierry Mugler are the solution that preserves the stability of the basic semantic meaning (brand name Thierry Mugler; fragrance name A*Men; the main perfume accord based on patchouli and sweets) while giving new signals (name additions Pure Energy and Ultra Zest; new colors of orange and white; perfume development towards citrus and mint with spices). And even reformulations (so reviled by many) and changes of the bottle or the perfume's name, oddly enough, serve the same purpose: to refresh our perceptions, nudge the customers and make them look at/smell the product in a new way.