She’s an Angel

July 13th, 2005

One of my great loves in this world is perfume – truth be told I’m obsessed with it. I love the bottles, the color and viscosity of the liquid sloshing around inside, and the sometimes unpredictable effect of the scent as it morphs from bottle to skin to drydown. I love the way any given perfume you find smells different – wholly individual and unique – on everyone. No two people wearing the same scent will smell exactly alike, ever.

It’s an art, though many people don’t see it that way. Perfume has become so commercialized and taken for granted in many people’s minds – it’s moved beyond its initial purpose to cover up human stank when showers weren’t readily available to an afterthought of an accessory, and one that should be taken more seriously than it is. Visit any department store on any given weekday, and chances are, every bottle you pick up will have a sense of familiarity – ubiquity and homogeneity are valued over art, in many cases, with a few exceptions.

Thierry Mugler’s Angel is certainly one of those exceptions. In a sea of vague, generic fruity-florals housed in unassuming, if attractive, vessels, Angel is a screaming contradiction. Love it or hate it, it’s one hell of a ballsy scent – it mixes traditionally gourmand/sweet notes such as chocolate and caramel with earthy patchouli and white flowers. Angel was ahead of its time – it was one of the first scents to mix distinctively masculine notes with traditional femininity – as famed perfume visionary Luca Turin said, Angel is a “transvestite – a gorgeous blonde with a five o’ clock shadow and a wicked laugh.” And he’s dead-on.

Despite the ubiquity that followed its somewhat unexpected success, I had never smelled Angel until I met Adam’s grandma. At first I was surprised that she wore such a ballsy, contradictory scent – after all, she was in her late seventies, and her perfectly coiffed hair and immaculate manicure led me to a false conclusion. After spending five minutes with her, it became astonishingly obvious that this perfume was made for her – she was loud, rambunctious, and almost raunchy, tempered with a soft, kind sweetness that endeared her to anyone who met her. Sparklingly vibrant, bright and brilliant with a smoky, earthy depth and a loud, soul-quenching belly laugh, she spelled her name with a ‘y’ instead of an ‘i’ before it became remotely cool to do so.

Grandma died yesterday morning. She was, like Angel, a contradiction of sorts – a young soul trapped in an aging body; a brilliant mind paired with a soft vulnerability; a ribald sense of humor juxtaposed with traditional femininity. And, like she was, her funeral tomorrow will be a day of contradictions – joy mixed with unthinkable sorrow; pain seated at the right hand of relief. Selfish, anguished misery because she’s not here with us – our children will never know first-hand what a pleasure she was, and I’ll never hear her fabulously sexy voice again. But it’s impossible not to be strangely joyful – she’s somewhere else now, joining her mother, – whom by all accounts was a key influence in her sassy, irreverent ways – and inciting a whole new group of souls to laugh so hard that they might pee in their heavenly robes.

They say you should never wear perfume to a funeral, for it might ruin the scent. Scent is one of the strongest memory-triggers, and to do so might forever tie a favorite fragrance to a day of heartbreak. But tomorrow, I shall pull out my little vial of Angel and spritz with abandon. I’ll never be able to wear it without thinking of her, and though I’m of the unlucky few on whom it smells like rotting canteloupe, a test application tonight proved otherwise. I think she might have had something to do with that.

Oh we miss you so much already.

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