Dear Perfume Industry:
Do me a solid and please quit ruining perfectly good scents by drying them out with icky-sicky baby powder stank. While I'm sure there are people in the world who enjoy smelling like baby ass, wouldn' it be kinder to allow these people to skip the middle man and just douse themselves in powder? It would certainly be cheaper ...
Case in point, A*Men, Thierry Mugler's masculine reimagining of Angel. I decided to try a sample of A*Men after reading many reviews that compared it - either favorably or unfavorably, depending on the reviewer - to HM for Men, a scent I raved about just the other day.
And, yes, there is a more than subtle resemblance between A*Men and HM. As promised, A*Men does share the rich, chocolately base I enjoyed so much in the HM. Unfortunately, while HM has many other interesting and complimentary notes to balance out the chocolate, the noses at Thierry Mugler saw fit to dump a bottle of baby powder into this sweet treat. The result, while not terrible, left me feeling flat.
If HM and A*Men are the olfactory siblings everyone claims, then they're no more than fraternal twins, at best. Neither scent is particularly dangerous or challenging, but in this family, the HM is the witty, flirtatious twin, while A*Men is the affably ho-hum one. Though likeable enough, this scent is the type that might sit at home on a Friday night reading Chicken Soup for the Soul or a Nicholas Sparks novel.
Image note: Nah ... I think you can get this one on your own.
