From the NYTimes.com
Just as a woman refreshes herself with a spritz of cologne, perfume is an art that is never static.
Angel, for example, revolutionized the aesthetics of perfumery by reinventing the gourmand school. Thierry Mugler told his creative directors he wanted a scent that recalled the sweetness of youth – chocolate, honey, pralines.
Shalimar had been there before: it brought the gourmand school into being in 1925 with the molecule ethyl vanillin (which smells like a thousand vanilla milkshakes), but it took Angel’s perfumer, Olivier Cresp, to restore it. He created a high-wire balancing act based on ethyl maltol, the molecule that gives cotton candy its smell. Against these supersweet atoms he set the chewy-almondy molecule coumarin as well as a natural patchouli that cuts the sweet the way ice cuts Grand Marnier. The result is brilliant.
Angel is remarkable technically: stable, diffusive, singular. It is also incredibly divisive. But great art often is. Angel changed the state of the art, and molecule for molecule, it is a masterpiece.
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