Oh, Thierry Mugler, you crazy Frenchman!  I love you and your olfactory genius!  I love Angel, I love Innocent , and now I love Womanity!

However, this is a love that, at first, did not seem meant to be. Let's go back in time to a few months ago, a time before my nose had ever touched this fragrance and my knowledge of Womanity was based purely on press releases and preliminary product reviews.  In spite of loving Mugler's other creations and a consistently concerted effort not to formulate opinions about scents I've yet to smell,  I hated almost everything I knew about Womanity from the first moment I read about it.

Let's start with the name: Womanity. What? Really, Thierry? When someone asks me what I'm wearing, I'm going to have to say that ridiculous "word" out loud? Yeah, no. I'm not doing that.

Then we have Womanity's ridiculous "bond between women" brand messaging -  I'm convinced there's an army of ad executives somewhere that are still working on replacing all the pants they ruined when they forced this campaign so hard they shit themselves. I'm extremely insulted by the entire concept and its components: 

• An "artsy" product website covered in platitudes submitted by "real" women with music I'm either supposed to use as a yoga backdrop or a soundtrack to a tear-filled epiphany about my vagina
• A separate Womanity "ambassador" site with a ridiculous splash page (REALLY? A SPLASH page? In 2010? ) plastered with a trio of  women holding the world's most unintentionally scary Halloween masks – women that I'm pretty sure would also like to advise me on yeast infection treatments, tampons, and what to do when I get that not-so-fresh feeling
• The overall presumption that women don't already have a bond, and that Thierry Mugler himself is the only one who can see this travesty and fix it – with perfume

The notes in Womanity are simply said to be caviar, fig, and fig wood, and early reviewers actually described the top note as being somewhat fishy which nearly sent me over the edge for reasons that should be obvious. Luckily for Thierry, my going over the edge would never affect him in the least and even if it magically did, I didn't completely fly off the deep end because:

•  The bottle with its kick ass Gigeresque embellishment is crazy awesome and -
•  Thierry Mugler is responsible for two of my favorite olfactory creations in the universe so I felt compelled to give him the benefit of the doubt until I smelled this perfume for myself.

Now let's fast-forward to 3 days ago when Megan finally caught me in a moment when I wasn't already doused in another perfume. She had me try on the Womanity she received in the form of a deluxe sample from a Mugler rep. and what can I say? I LOVE IT.

There's absolutely nothing fishy about it – the caviar note manifests itself in the form of the fleeting essence of a salty sea spray that almost immediately melds itself with the sweet, rich aroma of figs.  The heart delivers on Mugler's attempt to create a fragrance that is both savory and sweet, and the "caviar" note's transformation to just plain salt adds a dimension to the fragrance that, much like the hearts of his other creations, cannot be compared to anything else.  The base retains the salty-sweetness of the heart, but the understated fig wood note smooths things out and allows the scent to live out its extended dry down in a form that's still sexy but much less dramatic.

If you're not into sillage, Womanity is definitely not for you. In fact, neither the sillage nor the lasting power leave anything to be desired – I sprayed it on myself early in the evening and could still smell it the next morning.

Everything about it sings autumn and winter to me just as richly as Angel and Innocent do, but with less spice and more sugar. I love the smell of fig, but find it's usually executed in a way that's perfectly pleasant but just a touch too dainty ( Guerlain's Aqua Allegoria Figue-Iris) , or with a cheap, heavy hand ( Bath and Body Works' Brown Sugar and Fig).

Womanity isn't cheap but it's not over-the-top expensive, and for a normal perfume user, even a 1.7 oz. bottle ( $78)  should last for quite some time. 

However, I still wish the ad campaign had been entirely different and it was named something I wasn't embarrassed to speak aloud, like maybe "Fig de la Mer" or "L'océan de la Figure" or even just, "Fig and Sea Spray." Really.

Angel was a big shit deal when it came out back in '92, and has managed to stay a big shit deal over the course of the past 18 years. I loved it as a teen and then moved on to other things – lesser things – and have recently rediscovered it thanks to Megan's recent obsession with it. There's nothing else on the market like it, and in fact, it's so distinctive that I thought I would have trouble wearing it again because the smell so intensely puts me in a specific time and place that it was actually a disorienting experience to put it on at all ( Yeah, you had your highlights, winters of '94 and '95, but I do NOT need to relive you ).  Eventually, smelling it so often built up a cache of envy that overpowered my need to be oriented anywhere in time, and now I am once again Angel's slave.

Angel is BIG. It is not for everyone. It is over-the-top, and it will absolutely overpower any perfume anyone within a 20 foot radius is wearing.  There are some qualities about it that are slightly gourmand, but it's not nearly as sweet as its notes would suggest.  It's spices and woods I smell in the end – it could almost be described as a sweet patchouli except that it has far more dimension. Although it's big and wild – or maybe because it's big and wild – it's absolutely a smell for the extravagantly rich and those who mingle with (but don't serve) them.

This stuff comes in just about every shape and size anyone has ever imagined, many of which are refillable. I would not be surprised to find that there is a special edition dodecohedron container in existence. Even at a discount, this stuff will cost you, but the lasting power Angel has is unmatched, which means you can get quite a bit of mileage even out of the classic .08 oz. star bottle.

Expect to pay anywhere between $30 – $165 depending on the shape, size and rarity of your bottle.