This is a rave review. Just be prepared. I love this scent. In fact, I have come to regret all of the times I went perfume shopping and thought, I'll try Angel some other time. Sure, I knew people loved this scent (it practically has evangelists) and I also thought it had a very attractive bottle. But you know how it goes--so many fragrances, so little time. So I didn't own my own bottle of Angel until somewhat late in the game.

The base notes of Angel are rich vanilla and sandalwood. That sounds sort of flimsy, but it's a pretty sturdy anchor. The heart notes all strike me as kid scents: sugary and whimsical. I can't really identify them but they remind me at least of things like cotton candy, sugared almonds, even chocolate. There are also fruit notes in Angel (melon and peach) but not the kind of fruity notes that make you think of a smoothie. They're just sort of woven into the overall fanciful texture.

Despite the fact that Angel is full of the stuff of immaturity (sugary stuff), it is an amazingly adult fragrance. I can't imagine a kid wearing this (although I know many do). I think the scent is sort of like a dream--there are scent snippets of recognizable stuff and some stuff that you're not sure were really there but might have been.

I have a friend a Belgian friend whose girlfriend used to wear this fragrance. He told me that at first he hated it but he grew to like it. The girlfriend's gone but he's still rather fond of the fragrance.

By the way, according to Wikipedia, Angel is the number 1 perfume in France and is ranked Number 8 in the U.S. It came out in 1992.

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