Creed - Quality or Con - Page 2

Well said.

Creed subforum needed...

Indeed. that "royal pineapple" nonsense about Aventus is laughable.

We can criticize Creed's marketing and gimmicky press releases all we want . . . but they seem to be working. And that's about my last thought on the topic of Creed's marketing, until some new information comes out. It's pretty much all been said.

And regardless of marketing, when I find a replacement for MI, GIT, SMW, OV, and VIW that smells even remotely as good, I'll wear them. Till then, those five will pretty much always be in my collection, and I think for the price I'll gladly wear them. I tried every potential substitute under the sun for MI when the batches seemed excessively inconsistent a few years ago, and nothing came close (okay, Unforgivable Multi Platinum was in the ballpark, but it's still not quite as good, discontinued, and too expensive on Ebay).

This is what a Creed rep in STL told me...almost verbatim.

They apparently have their FAQ script standardized pretty well at least... ;-)

I don't understand why some of the member's here are trying to classify someone who buys Creeds as an amateur whose first step in the evolution of collecting "high-end" fragrances has fallen into a marketing hype trap.

My "cutting my teeth" with Aventus and GIT turned out to be an excellent choice no matter how long I've collected.

I have the luxury of having the Scent Bar located a few blocks from my office. It's literally three-five minutes away. I have recently spent hours in there over several days trying different high-end colognes.

Most recently, Amouage has been on my hit list. I keep going back to the Bar and can't find one that I really like(when you consider smell, longevity and projection).

I was torn between Creed's GIT and Memoir Man. I like both very much. I've had samples of MM for several weeks now which were given to me by the Scent Bar. It doesn't last but a couple hours and projection isn't very good after the first hour on me. GIT lasts much longer and projects much more imo. So, I bought GIT. If Memoir Man lasted longer and projected, I would have considered it more.

The only Amouage that has lasted on me and projects like crazy is Interlude and Jubilation. But I think Interlude smells terrible on me while Jubilation is nice but definitely not worth me owning a bottle imo, especially at that price.

Oh, Lyric Man is excellent, but I don't need any more rose scents.

My point is, everyone has different tastes. Just because I think Interlude stinks(and so does the employee at the Scent Bar), and Memoir Man is nothing more than a skin scent after a couple hours doesn't make Amouage a con, does it?

Olivier CREED, sixth-generation master perfumer of France, presents in America -- before all other countries -- Aventus, a fragrance for men (and adored by women) celebrating strength, power, vision and success. CREED Aventus is inspired by the dramatic life of a historic emperor who waged war, peace and romance on terms he set, riding on horseback to victory. Superb ingredients become in the hands of Olivier CREED the unrivaled Aventus, a worldly blend and must-have for the individual who savors a life well lived.

Top notes: Finest blackcurrant, Italian bergamot, French apples and a burst of royal pineapple.

$315.00 tax excluded With CREED Aventus, enjoy...


UTTERLY NAUSEATING :-)

@ dougczar re:
"If people kept starting threads bashing Amouage for their Attar variations, or Dior for their incessant reformulations and how they must be a low quality farce, I would probably respond by point out Creed in response as well."

There has been much discontent voiced on various threads here about the Tribute & Homage reformulations (red box on) and previous batch variation.
Batch variation was accepted & may make a fairly natural product interesting (even if it makes discussing it over the internet difficult!), but the weakened re-formulations annoyed a load of people who had been more than happy with the early 'white box' batches.

Sorry to interrupt

I present to the community of Basenotes and all it's members - the Royal Pineapple.

It smells divine. But don't look at it for very long.

That's pretty much my thought -- I think the whole point of the Amouage Attars was that they were using uber expensive, limited, highest-quality-available materials, on limited production runs -- I'd be suprised if there weren't variations.

Creeds are more or less mass produced consumer products, with more limited production than, say, Acqua di Gio, but still mass produced. GIT probably sells 1,000 bottles for every Amouage Attar sold. That's why I expect Creeds to be consistent in smell, like pretty much every other cologne. And (crosses fingers) it seems to me that lately the Creeds I've bought have, in fact, been pretty consistent in their smells from prior bottles.

But when Creed has batch variations, people say "yeah, but for the price - it should be more tightly controlled! Where is the quality control!" And, the Attars are much more expensive than any Creed products...

Also, I am not sure where you are getting your information about their source materials - is it some inside facts you have, or are you basing that on some assumption about the price - or Amouage marketing?


And I see you have 4 of your top 10's from Creed. Not unusual here on Basenotes. Looks like you have been "Conned"!



Yep - I see the threads:
http://www.basenotes.net/threads/306...tch-variations

http://www.basenotes.net/threads/313...ion-i-m-buying

This proves the point I was making. The discussion was pretty much about when, why, etc. And the disappointment people feel about it being "watered down", etc. -- Not a word about Amouage being some sort of con, joke of a company, etc. Clearly a completely different feel - about a FAR greater formula change than anyone experiences with Creed.

No idea about Amouage quality, except that I thought that was the whole premise of the Attars.

And not only are four out of my top ten Creeds, I'd say if I ever listed my top 20, perhaps another three would make the cut. I'm not a Creed fanboy by any means, but damn, it makes great smelling stuff. And that's all I care about.

1. I wasn't trying to say Creed is handmade. I was more just looking for an analogy to demonstrate that Creed is not a commodity product on the low shelf at a basement price. It's more of a premium product in a luxury market. A function of simply its cost, and not a commentary on its quality. By limited, it's not available at my local discount drugstore.

2. I did not intend to imply or outright state that everyone who likes Creed is like this. Some are. Sometimes I am. *shrug* (For the record, I've yet to sample a Creed I've opted to purchase, thus far.)

3. It's ok to disagree.

Based in Paris, CREED today is led by the legendary Olivier CREED, sixth generation master perfumer and company chief.

Some people lap this stuff up.

I can't help wondering if people at the company actually believe this crap or if they are secretly laughing at those who believe it..

I imagine there is a degree of mirth in evidence back at the ranch . . . "Okay, we need a ROYAL pineapple, guys, a couple of hundred years+ should do it . . . "

Hi sorry for any mistakes in my english, im new to the world of creed, and only knew about them, cause i got three bottles from a friend.
Aventus 120 ml,Bois de portugal 75 ml and green irish tweed 120 ml(Aventus with peeling label
I fell iin love with BDP and GIT at once, aventus i dont know, dont get much of that pineapple note, most u guys talking about, but i do get a lot of smoke
Allthough prices are high on creed, i can see my self purchasing more creeds.
I really think that aventus is overhyped, but bdp and git, imo are great and very unique scents.
but again i am really very new in the wold of fragrances ...have a nice sunday

Hello maestro 71. Your English seems good to me. So that was your first post on Basenotes and it was about Aventus and GIT. You will probably feel very much at home here then :-)

I completely agree with you. I think the Creed House is definitely taking its customers for granted.

Ha ha...well thank you...and yes i noticed,lots of guys here are in to creeds

The majority of them are also on Basenotes and other forums keeping the Creed threads going. Like many of the Creed babys (mostly newbies) on Basenotes, they're sensitive to anything negative being said about their fragrances. Most perfume insiders have hundreds of humorous stories about this operation.

Ironically, the name Creed or any of its fragrances are rarely if ever mentioned in the good perfume schools. Although he wasn't given credit, Pierre Bourdon probably saved the company when he made Green Irish Tweed in 1985. Literally everything since then is at least partly based on it.

I am quite fond of Creed fragrances. Wear them frequently. Wouldn't mind having the entire collection. Chipping my way through it, actually.

I ll drink any perfume the Master Perfumer Sensei Olivier Creed extraordinaire creates!
If only you guys knew what ROYAL pineapple actually tastes like.

I bought my first Creeds well before I'd ever heard of basenotes. I bought samples of several scents and bought bottles of the ones I liked. I really didn't care whether the stories about which king or queen had what fragrance dumped in their bath water every night or which famous actor supposedly was the inspiration for what. I like the fragrances I have in my collection and there are several that I sampled that I didn't like at all.

As for some of these"batch variation" stories, unless you're using a fragrance six times a day, 25 sprays at a time, that bottle is going to be around long enough to change in character from the first spray to the last. So, the new bottle you just got may smell like the old one did when you bought it but not when you finished it. And really, if any of you are buying a back up bottle of something and the spraying it right away just to see if this batch smells exactly the same as the last, then you have two bottles exposed to air that are oxidizing instead of one.

Seriously, we all need to get over ourselves. If Olivier Creed makes perfume by magically pooping it out his butt every third full moon, great. As long as it smells good to me, I'm going to keep wearing it.

Alas, My only wish is that the Creed cheerleaders would realistically say "yea, Creed has made some flops, yea, the label peeling sucks, yea they are overpriced." I just want some perspective. Oh, and quit being so freaking defensive!!! I see people bashing things about some of my favorite companies, and I laugh and say, yea, that does suck. I don't get defensive.

One thing people don't realise about the master perfumer's ROYAL pineapple is how much it can stain clothing. You are never going to get that jacket clean..

The Creed fans out there have to realize that Creed is not the answer to every question. If I see one more suggestion of Aventus or GIT in a "high school kid on a budget" thread, I may scream.

Don't count myself as necessarily a "Creed fan" but I do like a few of their fragrances. I also really dislike some of their offerings and have said so. Please don't lump everybody that ever liked a Creed fragrance into the "fanboy" category. Thank you. That is all.

I DON'T lump them all together. I own GIT, AVENTUS, and had OV and MI. There is a difference between a person (like you and me) who enjoys offerings from the house, and the "cheerleaders" Who post "you need to try Aventus" in threads about High School frags, Tar based frags, Musk frags, or any other line of thought that has nothing whatever to do with Aventus. I have had people say "Just avoid the Creed threads" but when I click on "what is your favorite Ramon Monegal frag. and see, "It isn't Ramon, but you REALLY need to try Aventus...I want to scream.

biggest con job in modern perfumery, Creed.

You know, for a lot of people who learn about new (and niche) perfumes through Basenotes, the faux history marketing is negligible. Creed is not readily available in every country in the world, but Basenotes is a forum with global participation.

We all read the reviews (overly biased reviews by Creed fanboys aside), and we read the discussions. It boils down to the discussion of the notes. If we are discerning enough, we know to avoid the over-enthusiastic fanboy-type reviews and comments.

If we then want to proceed to actually use Creed after all our research and reading, we either buy samples or decants from the various sources (mostly online) or we blind-buy splits or from online retailers directly. So, this means a lot of us do not really come into contact with the marketing at all. We do occasionally buy into the hype (it's hard to avoid knowing about Aventus when there's one or two threads on the first page), but ultimately, the proof lies in smelling the juice. And to me, Creed has proven its worth.

The problem I have with these threads is that everybody seems to think there are two camps: (1) the "Creed fanboys," who love everything about Creed, are made of money, and suggest it to everyone and everyone, oblivious to the large number of just-average Creeds and somewhat iffy production values; and (2) the "Creed haters" who despise Creed and think everybody that says anything nice about Creed is a money-to-burn poser who just wants to sound sophisticated and ignores the far-superior offerings of other houses.

I think most of us fall in the middle. I adore MI, GIT, VIW, Original Vetiver, SMW, and a few others. I hate Aventus, Bois du Portugal, Royal Delight, Royal Scottish Lavender, Tabarome, and a few others. I think the rest are middling, but wouldn't buy them for the price. And I'd suspect most basenoters actually fall into this camp, which judges scents based on how they smell, not by the fact that they're by Creed. But maybe I'm deluding myself.

I agree with you. Perhaps the middle camp is the quiet majority who do not care enough to accuse or defend Creed. I do find the bias against Creed troubling, even if there are other houses with quality control issues (Amouage being a current example), while many other houses have major reformulation problems (Serge Lutens, Guerlain, Caron, Slumberhouse), it's always Creed that gets lynched.

Creed is the Apple Corp. of the fragrance world. Well regarded in many ways, loathed in others.

To be honest I like some of their stuff but I am not going to pay 120+ for something I cannot be assured will be consistent. There is already an obscene markup on fragrances, so at the very least I expect a bottle that works if I am to be gouged like that.

Also, my cat knows who Luca Turin is. Who does Creed think he is kidding?

Was totally unimpressed with Creed GIT, I found it to be quite soapy on my skin... It smelled cheap to me. I'm really quite glad I tested GIT and didn't buy a full bottle based off what I read on here. That being said, GIT is the only frag in the Creed line that I've tested.

Perfect statement. I agree with this word for word.
Vintage Tabarome is the only fragrance that interests me.

any of those companies you mentioned had the ridiculous PR bullshit that Creed has and monopolised half of the threads (with a sticky for batch numbers for Christ's sake) on Basenotes they would be the ones getting lynched.

Ilum Dean buys his Pineapple from Walmart

I agree with this. Some scents are good, some aren't, same with all houses. And yes, Creed aren't the only ones with batch variations, poor reformulations or quality control issues. As an accessible niche house, they are a favoured target for those who have moved on to more 'rarified' (cough) pastures

AGREED...There are those obsessed FEW who ruin every thread with their drivel about Creed and the FEW who complain loudly about it...but there are the silent majority who see it for what it is...a house that makes good and bad fragrances.

This.

They make some very good fragrances, there are some that are middling and there are some which are just a bit poor. I've worked my way through most of the Creed products over the years and there are some that I'm happy to recommend but ultimately it comes down to personal preference.

I dont have too much of problem with the history thing either to be honest. Its marketing garbage and you have to take it as such but if you like the smell and can get it at a price that you're happy with, who cares?

This Creed thread is giving me a serious or..ah....ah ....ahhhhhh!!

Creed fragrances are good in general but they do have issues with quality control and crappy bottles, but still much better than Bond fragrances which are mostly very cheap aromachemicals packed in a ridiculous looking bottle. I own 2 Creeds and 1 Bond.

You see I've never had a problem with the bottles or the atomisers they use. I find them pretty good and I must have had about 20 bottles over the last few years of different sizes and varieties

So . . . . you vote "con"?

I hate to come across as 'hipster' but hype and fanaticism really do affect me negatively. I may well have been a Creed fan if it wasn't for all the mindless, tiresome and repetitive babble about Aventus being the greatest thing to ever grace the earth. It's put me right off to the point where the scent itself actually annoys me...

I only own one Creed.

That said, Barry, I would say, "Con." Too much faux historical hype.

Then look up the French definitions of that word.

Creed is just a bullsh*t house to me. A scam that tries to sell products by marketing gimmick and does not give a F about the quality

They punch way above their weight. That said if you like the juice and don't mind the price, go for it.


This is a great idea.

Overrated and overpriced. Vetiver Original aside, I've never been remotely tempted to invest in a Creed fragrance.

I would rather spend the money on Editions de Parfums, Amouage, Serge Lutens, Chanel Exclusifs or La Collection Privée from Dior for similar prices.

I like many if their fragrances, love them, and find them unique and relevant. Very high quality. That said, I don't see the obsession either. They smell lovely and natural but many have batch issues, do not protect, or last. However, there and some that do. Like any house, you have your hit and misses. We are all fanboys of something and far be it from me to tell anyone what to like of dislike. I don't think it's an obsession but try to view it as being passionate.

I own four Creeds and all I know is that I love the way they smell, and I get good to great performance out of them.

I think that Creed is now the 'Crema de Mar/Birkin bag' of the perfume world and that's nothing to do with how any of their scents actually smell. It's about image, prestige and being able to say that you have a good enough lifestyle to possess them.

Nobody doubts that there are perfectly good handbags made for a tenth of the price of a Birkin bag (or even less) or that other companies make face cream which is every bit as effective as Crema de Mar for a fraction of the price, so I find it hard to understand why to some people seem to believe that if you don't wear Creed you clearly don't know what makes a good perfume.