Mirror, mirror, on the wall…

Every year fragrance fans await the next provocative move of Thierry Mugler. Last year he aged Angel, one of the best-selling perfumes of all time, like fine cognac to produce La Part des Anges, a fragrance of rare vintage on the skin. The year before that he created the Perfume coffret, a box of 15 scents inspired by the movie of the same name.

This year is no less exciting. In October Mugler will launch a worldwide campaign with actress Naomi Watts as the new face of Angel. Known less as tabloid fodder than one of the finest actresses of her generation, the Mulholland Drive star was photographed by Ali Mahdavi, while the upcoming commercial was filmed by Bill Condon, director of Dreamgirls.

“It’s been a long time since we’ve had a personality as the face of Angel,” observes John Marangos, Thierry Mugler’s PR director for Asia-Pacific. “We had Jerry Hall in 1994. But I think Naomi Watts is a really interesting choice.”

Watts will also be the face of another exciting project: Mugler Beauty. As in all things Mugler, this is not your ordinary makeup line but high-tech products made in Japan that feature innovative textures. Though the line is available at Saks Fifth Avenue in New York and La Baie in Montreal, there are no plans to launch the makeup here, according to Rustan’s, Mugler’s exclusive distributor in the Philippines. Chalk it up to luxury prices and a tight economy. FYI, however, the line includes such wittily named items as Hyper Tension, a tightening face cream, and Plexi Gloss, a super-shiny lip lacquer. Other innovations include an instant, wrinkle-erasing pen and various mirrored compacts for sculpting eyes and face. “The idea behind Mugler Beauty is transformation — light and shadow rather than color — so we don’t have color stories,” notes Marangos. “It’s all about transforming yourself.”

But don’t despair yet, Mugler fans. Linked to the makeup line and already available here is Miroir, Miroir!, the “Mirror, Mirror” collection of five fragrances that was launched a couple of weeks ago at Rustan’s Makati. “Behind that is the idea of different facets of one’s personality,” Marangos explains. “The mirror reflects certain things, and Mr. Mugler has a fascination and love for mirrors.”

The mirror theme is first evident in the packaging. The crystal bottles by Brosse are art deco-inspired yet futuristic-looking, with Mugler’s characteristic spike piercing down the middle. The box, however, is the real departure. It’s covered wall-to-wall in mirrors. “The most beautiful thing about it is that once you have the bottle at home, you take the bottle out, you flip the box and it becomes a glorifier,” Marangos says.

While other niche perfume houses focus on single notes or traditional natural ingredients, Mugler again goes against the trend to create fragrances in his usual spirit of luxury, sophistication and contradiction, expressed in names full of double meanings and unconventional note pairings.

A Travers Le Miroir (Through the Looking Glass) blends very feminine ingredients with very masculine ones, i.e., a very femme, lovely heart of tuberose is given a bracing, masculine freshness by wintergreen, “which you normally get in toothpaste or lollipops,” and the unexpected heady aroma of absinthe. Sniffing this juice is like Alice finally stepping into Wonderland.

Miroir des Secrets (Mirror of Secrets) marks the first time in perfumery a natural aldehyde has been fused with patchouli and musk. (Aldehydes are typically synthetic fragrance molecules that smell clean and soapy.) The result is a perfume that walks the tightrope between light and dark — the aldehyde gives a sparkling aspect to the earthy patchouli and warm, sexy skin-scent of musk.

Dis-Moi, Miroir (Mirror Image) is another unusual composition combining lily, “which represents the young woman,” with orange blossom, “which is traditionally worn by brides. But then he’s got a milky note which he’s linked to mothers.” The flowers and milky notes produce a beautifully creamy floral that definitely angles toward the feminine, “yet a lot of men really love this particular fragrance so there’s contradiction there,” notes Marangos. And people apparently love contradiction: Dis-Moi Miroir was the No. 1 fragrance for a whole month in the Sephora store on Paris’s Champs-Elysees — another first.

Miroir des Vanités (Mirror of Vanities) may play on the dark side of mirror gazing, but this juice is in a class by itself. Effervescent citrus notes contrast with bitter cinchona bark and vetiver to generate a fizzy new accord that some critics have compared to Campari soda. I don’t drink so I get spicy whiffs of cinnamon that smell mouthwateringly edible … I’d follow anyone around who was wearing this scent.

Miroir des Envies (Mirror of Desires), like Miroir des Vanités, is another gourmand in the tradition of Angel, yet couldn’t smell more different. “It’s got a toasted brioche smell — he’ll mix a gustative note with a brand-new, revolutionary fragrance note,” Marangos says. On skin, the notes of toast and jasmine also give off a hazelnut-ty aroma, like Perugina’s luscious Baci bonbons.

With his five Mirror fragrances, Mugler has truly transcended masculine and feminine to come up with truly unisex, or mixed, fragrances. Extending the whole idea about mirrors is the visual for the campaign, in which five seemingly different types of women beckon but if you look closely, you realize it’s the same model. “It’s not that one perfume is linked to a personality type, it just means that each fragrance will bring a different aspect out of you.”

So, who is the fairest one of all? Whoever’s daring enough to follow Thierry Mugler once again into his avant-garde, Blade Runner-esque universe. Or maybe you’ve gotten olfactory fatigue, like me, from all those celebrity perfumes that smell the same.

As Marangos says, “We’ve had phenomenal sales and that goes back to the public wanting to have really interesting fragrances again. Mass celebrity will always exist, but there’s a real movement towards perfumes that are very qualitative, luxurious, sophisticated and most important, interesting.”

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Thierry Mugler’s Mirror fragrance collection is exclusively available at Rustan’s Makati.