Creed Royal Scottish Lavender

Lavender, a chilly note in and of itself, is not necessarily my favorite fragrance ingredient in cold weather, unless I am looking for an olfactory detox of sorts... if not remorseful corporal mortification... after the holiday excesses. Or unless it is served warm, like in Creed's Royal Scottish Lavender. Built on the same jolting-n-soothing principle as, say, mint hot chocolate, a drink made for snowy days, Royal Scottish Lavender juxtaposes the fresh, bright sharpness of lavender with the sweet, satisfyingly thick velvetiness of vanilla and sandalwood. Like with mint hot chocolate, where the cooling effect of mint somehow tricks your mind into thinking that the beverage, despite being chocolaty, creamy and sweet, is not particularly calorific, Creed's Lavender creates an illusion of transparency and gives me that vague, smug feeling I always get when wearing an herbal(-ish) scent- that in some way the perfume is actually good for me, aroma-therapeutically speaking. Add to that the cushiony, snugly effect of vanilla and sandalwood, and what you have is a great winter comfort scent. If you too don't believe that lavender may be such, do give Creed's rendition a try. Available where Creed is sold, $175.00-$280.00. Image source, creedboutique.com.

Creed Acqua Fiorentina: Perfume Review

Acqua Fiorentina, the new perfume from Creed, may have been inspired by the 15th century Florence, but, for me, it went so wonderfully well with the 21st century East Coast of Atlantic ocean, this American paradise of Colonial and Federal buildings, lighthouses, dunes, windmills and a general feeling of affluent tranquility and refined rusticity. The composition is centered on the aroma of greengage plum. Lovers of plum in fragrance, take note. The slighly sweet, slightly tangy, slightly green and a lot mouthwatering scent of unripe plums is astoundingly true to life. The accord makes appearance right in the beginning and stays throughout the scent's development. In fact, hours and hours into the wearing, the plums is the predominant note in the drydown of this unexpectedly long-lasting fragrance. I say, unexpectedly, because one does not assume such longevity in a scent so ethereal. The perfume is a gentle light-pink gauze of young rose and carnation petals and new fruits, airy, soft and joyful. A perfect balance of honeyed sweetness and dry verdancy, a scent at once sublimely ellegant and charmingy innocent. Acqua Fiorentina will be available in September at Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman, $130.00-$350.00. A portion of proceeds from US sales in October will benefit the National Breats Cancer Coalition Fund.

Perfume Review: Creed Love in Black

I wanna be Jackie Onassis. I wanna wear a pair of dark sunglasses. I wanna be Jackie. Tire Me, Rage Against the Machine. Love in Black is Creed's homage to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and is meant to evoke "the unique elan" of Mrs Onassis: "her dark, mysterious eyes behind dark sunglasses, her wavelets of brunette hair, her trim shape in a black sheath." The ingredients used in the blend allegedly come from places loved by Jackie, and the perfume is being released on the 40th anniversary of her wedding to Aristotle Onassis. I am surprisingly very uninterested in "what perfumes celebrities wear" and never gave any thought to what scent could have suited Jackie O... I suppose it would be a scent that is classically proportioned, with the kind of spare elegance that the former First Lady favored and which I absolutely admire and to which I aspire. "Dramatic preppy" is how I would classify such a perfume. Love in Black is exactly such a fragrance. In his column in September Allure, Frederic Malle notes that the iris note in Love in Black makes the composition reminiscent of Chanel No 19, only without the green notes of the latter. On my skin and to my nose, the new Creed is all about violet, not iris, and I think that a not too dainty violet blend is a great way to do preppy/WASPy, an alternative to the aldehydes and clean-sporty scents populating this category. The composition starts with a very short-lived whiff of something freshly floral (the "night-blooming wildflowers from the Greek isles" perhaps). In less than a second that sharpish accord is gone and the violet note begins to unfold. The note is done just the way I like it, it is "buttery" rather than powdery, has a noticeable (cedar)woody undertone and delicate sweetness from blackcurrants. Somewhere towards the base, rose can be smelled but it is very subtle and does not overshadow violet while enhancing the rounded, feminine feel of the blend. I would position this violet fragrance somewhere between the rich and buttery Norma Kamali Violette and the sweet, woody and no less buttery Bois de Violette by Lutens. It is elegant and classic but not too prim and propper and as such is very versatile: wear it with a sheath dress or with a turtleneck sweater. It does indeed evoke the "unique elan" of Jacqueline Kennedy and fits the overall spirit of the Creed collection very well (it also seems to me that a stately violet offering was overdue from this line). Like Malle, I think that Love in Black will be one of the smartest releases this fall and might very well become the one and only Creed scent in my current perfume wardrobe. Love in Black will be available in September in Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman and Saks 5th Ave, $130.00 for 1oz, $230.00 for 2.5oz and $350.00 for 8.4oz. More information can be found at creedperfumes.us.

Perfume Review - Creed Royal English Leather

By Beth I love my husband. To me he is one of the sexiest men alive and I’ve always felt that way about him even after 28 years. He’s quite attractive in what my mother calls a “British sort of way” and he looks marvelous in a kilt. He doesn’t wear his kilt with all of the pomp and nonsense, he wears it with a blue Irish wool sweater and looks as if he’s walked right out of the Highlands. He is quite formal about his tux though and it must be double breasted. His very thick hair is gray in all of the right places and long enough for me to play with. There’s always been something about him that seemed timeless, of another place where men were a bit more dignified and by contrast much more bawdy, when men wore their hair long and wavy and they weren’t at all afraid to wear velvet and a bit of lace with their leather. He used to ride my stallion bareback with only a halter for control. I can easily picture him with a saber and a pistol although now the only weapons that he brandishes are purely raw courage, a rich and sarcastic sense of humor and his lightning quick intellect. On the softer side, he cried the day that I married him and has been a perfect father to our son. He got down on one knee and asked me to remarry him in front of my whole family and our friends two Christmases ago. He is loyal to the point of obsession and very passionate. He is warm in the autumn and always smells to me like fresh windfall apples and very good cigars. He never kisses and tells. He is the perfect gentleman, quiet and powerful in the boardroom and........ He has never worn a fragrance because we have never found one that suited such a spectacular sort of man. But, one day about a month ago I found myself standing at the Creed counter at Saks Fifth Avenue, looking for yet another Lily of the Valley fragrance. Tia, the absolutely fabulous Creed SA was trying in vain to find one for me and was generously proffering me with lots of samples in the hopes that I might yet again fall in love. It was then that I noticed an absolutely gorgeous amber vial filled with a golden elixir, understated yet intriguing, coolly beckoning me closer. I read the label, Royal English Leather. “Hmm” , I thought, “maybe I could love this”, being one that has had more indecent fantasies of romps with royalty then you could even begin to imagine. Then , I sniffed. When they picked me up off of the floor, they told me that I had fainted dead away in something like an orgasmic swoon, whispering Byronic inspired prose. What I remembered when I came to was a beautiful meadow , gorgeous dappled bay horses with ribbons in their manes, beautiful, naked young men clothed only in flowing long hair with lutes and the soft strands of Scarborough Fair playing through my memory. My husband was there, quite naked as well. I won’t go any further, I told you that I have very indecent fantasies! Yet, through the haze of my all too vivid imagination there was something familiar stirring. My cell phone was ringing, bringing me sadly back to this century. Fortunately, it was Jim inviting me to meet him for lunch at Nordstrom's. I quickly sprayed some of the Royal English Leather on my wrists, steadied myself and went to meet him. After commenting on my pale and wanton visage, he cocked his head and asked to smell my wrist. He took a deep breath and kissed it as if he would have liked to bite. “Hmm” he said, “I want you to go buy that right now”. Royal English Leather is one of the oldest fragrances still being produced having been commissioned by King Charles III. It is a romantic fragrance filled with leather, mandarin and ambergris. It smells of tobacco and the sweat of a magnificent horse. It is totally classy yet filled with skank. Every time my husband wears it I become weak in the knees which he must not mind because he’s been wearing it everyday. Such pleasure from such a simple little thing. The one time I tried to wear it I was informed that I wasn’t allowed to touch it. Torture. Creed Royal English Leather can be found easily online, definitely at Saks Fifth Avenue and many other wonderful stores. Try it and see if you don’t enjoy the Jacobean fantasies it produces, but please be sure to not let go of the counter! Photo from the Creed US Homepage.

White Floral Queen Part Two: Creed Fleurissimo

By Donna The one thing that everyone knows about Fleurissimo by Creed is that Prince Rainier of Monaco commissioned it for the occasion of his marriage to Grace Kelly, as a gift for her to wear on their wedding day, and not released for sale to the public until 1972. Perhaps this gives people who are not familiar with this fragrance the impression that this is a ladylike composition, demure and proper as befits the consort of a Prince. That is not exactly true. This may be the only nominally “tuberose” scent I know of that does not have a heavy tropical sweetness to it – not that there is anything wrong with that, of course. The remarkable thing about Fleurissimo is that the tuberose is perfectly and seamlessly matched with violet and Florentine iris, as well as Bulgarian rose. The result does not smell like any one of these elements, but rather a fusion of light airiness that is like a summer breeze wafting through a garden. The violet keeps the tuberose in check, not allowing it to become too heady or overbearing. In doing so, the violet itself is somewhat masked and it emerges only as a sheer freshness, which is amplified by the gorgeously cool iris note. The rose is used in a judicious dose, lending a round and soft character to the whole without being too much of an influence otherwise. This fragrance is all sail and no ballast; there is no wood or other heavier base note to anchor it. It floats by itself on a sea of clouds, free with its sillage, announcing the presence of the wearer well in advance. It is a different kind of Big White Floral, dressed in a gauzy, translucent Grecian gown instead of a heavy satin Drama Queen number. It changes very little in character during the course of the day, except when it is hot and humid, whereupon the tuberose finally escapes from her prim and proper violet and iris chaperones for a while and goes a little wild. At any stage, the keynote to this scent is it airiness – even in a closed room there always seems to be a lot of space around it, overarching and open. There was a time some years ago when I wore this perfume almost exclusively, and I loved it so much that I probably over-applied it at times. (It is relatively light so I hope I did not turn anyone into a fragrance hater.) Why did I stop wearing it? As we all know, fragrance and memory are intertwined, and I went through a series of very bad experiences in my life for several years that seemed to pile on each other in merciless succession, including a hopelessly unrequited love that took me years to get over. Now when I smell Fleurissimo it makes me sad and wistful, though I still adore it. I remember who I was when I started wearing it, and that person is now gone. I liked a lot of things about her, but I will never be that way again, an eternally optimistic girl who thought that everything would always turn out right somehow. I still have a streak of that optimism in me that refuses to go away completely, but that time of my life is what finally turned me into as much of a “grown-up” as I will probably ever be. Fleurissimo is a part of my “before” past. I still have a little bit of it, and lately I have been toying with the idea of trying to wear it just to prove to myself that I can. I detect its influence in other, usually lesser scents, but nothing else gets the balance just right. Its utterly disarming natural freshness and floralcy is such a delight, I don’t think I want to deprive myself of it forever. This fragrance is about radiance and happiness more than anything else, and I hope that someday it will mean that to me again. Fleurissimo would be good for someone who likes tuberose but who finds most of the fragrances on the market that have it to be too sweet and heady for daily use, and also for those who love violet but are looking for something more exciting and sensual than the usual type of violet perfume. Applied judiciously, it is a most agreeable scent that is easy to live with, and though it not cheap by any means, it costs less than many inferior compositions. The House of Creed has been around for a long time and many of their perfumes, including this one, are true classics. It is widely available in specialty shops and at online fragrance retailers. It is available as Eau de Parfum (called a “Millesime” by Creed), and now can be found in Bath and Shower Gel, Body Lotion and Soap at Neiman-Marcus and selected Saks Fifth Avenue stores. The usual size for the EDP is 2.5 ounces, which retails for about $190 but can easily be located at a lower price online. If you really like this fragrance, it can be had in an 8.4 ounce Flacon, which is a bit harder to find, but it’s a real bargain even at the retail price of $290, and I have seen that size for less than that as well.. Image credits: Creed Fleurissimo bottle from creedfragrances.co.uk. Austrian Teplitz Art Nouveau figurine, from fine estate auction site burchardgalleriescom.