The fashion world is losing a big name: designer Thierry Mugler died at the age of 73, on the night of Sunday January 23, of "natural death", announced his press officer to AFP.
The one who reigned over the fashion of the 1980s and who continued to dress international stars with his spectacular outfits (from Lady Gaga to Beyoncé, via Kim Kardashian) also distinguished himself in the field of perfumery.
In October 1979, five years after the launch of his brand, he declared to the American newspaper
Women's Wear Daily
: "I want to make a fragrance so delicious that we will want to eat it."
Thirteen years later, this addictive juice that was to become his olfactory signature was born.
In 1992, Thierry Mugler unveiled his first haute couture collection and immediately launched the perfume Angel.
From Grasse perfumer Olivier Cresp, he will ask for “a smell of chocolate and caramel, a classic juice that a little boy would give to his mother”, also telling him about his childhood memories filled with cakes and sweets.
A new kind of fragrance
His innovative approach to fashion can be found in this unique olfactory proposal, in total rupture with the codes of traditional perfumery of the time: without flowers, with sweet raw materials and played in overdose. A reinterpretation of oriental trails that initiates a new genre, the gourmand, with its captivating notes of red fruits, praline, vanilla and patchouli. Added to this is a color of liquid that has never been used: blue, the emblematic color of the house. Only a year after its launch, sales took off to rival Chanel's mythical N°5.
“After hundreds of tries, Angel was created.
[…] I never would have believed that it would become such an important success, which would influence the world of perfumery.
The big houses launched a new perfume every six months at the time”, he declared in 2021 in an interview with Thierry-Maxime Loriot, curator of the exhibition
Thierry Mugler, Couturissime
at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris.
“The iconic perfumes were missing, and especially the bottles that made people dream – those that had marked me as a child, like Shalimar, Joy de Patou, real beautiful collectibles.
Angel, it was quite a complex search.
Perfume, in my opinion, is one of the tools at our disposal to bring magic into people's daily livesThierry Mugler
Like his clothes, which he designed as "beauty armor", Thierry Mugler made Angel the fatal accessory of his imaginary heroines: "Perfume, in my opinion, is one of the tools at our disposal to bring magic to people's daily lives.
It completes a person's universe, will have it somewhere, it's the final touch, ”he confided.
An avant-garde bottle
The exhibition teaches us that the young Mugler slept on public benches in parks and gazed in the sky at “this star which always shone more than the others, bluish”, which evoked infinity and dreams for him. It is this fanciful vision that inspired the couturier to create the Angel bottle. Produced in collaboration with his accomplice, the industrial designer Jean-Jacques Urcun, the asymmetrical five-pointed star emblematic of the brand was a real technical challenge for crystal-making. “Everything was invented for this bottle, especially the fragrance, a real feat, and even the refill source to keep the object and reuse it. A real challenge for top professionals. At the beginning of the 1990s, we weren't talking about recycling your perfume bottle!”, welcomed the designer in the same interview.
Over the decades, many celebrities have embodied this now iconic fragrance in advertising campaigns with phenomenal scenographies, from Jerry Hall to Naomi Watts, including Georgia May Jagger, Eva Mendes and Toni Garn.
Thirty years after its creation, Angel by Thierry Mugler and its instantly recognizable trail is one of the best-selling perfumes in the world.
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