Armaf is doing very interesting things lately. I could get into the "how" of it, but the answer is simple: money. The UAE is an oil-rich country where the money is so abundant that it flows into stupid things, like cheap perfume. Thus, something like Club de Nuit Sillage, which costs ten dollars an ounce, can prompt Westerners to elide their thinking about genuinely exorbitant stuff with drugstore Arabian fare.
This leads to members of Fragrantica deluding themselves into thinking that there are "batch variations" and significant reformulations of Armaf frags. Let me get this out of the way: there are neither. Every brand has batches, but 99% of them are merely quality control numbers, with no discernible difference in smell. Creed is an outlier in that they intentionally varied fragrance compositions from batch to batch, which led to perennial speculation on the supposed differences in character and quality from year to year, especially for the big sellers like Aventus and Millésime Impérial.
As to the conjecture about reformulations, which isn't uncommon in this community, I would point out that most of the Club de Nuit range is new and still under the radar, where these frags will likely stay for many years to come, so I can't see any benefit in reformulating them. Before you shout at me, remember that we here in the fragrance community are not representative of the larger population, which has never heard of Armaf. We're also not in Dubai, where the mentality is to increase budgets, so if anything, Armaf would hopefully improve their offerings via reformulation.
Fragrantica user "bandofthehawk999" wrote of Sillage:
"I own the original formula (Black atomizer 2020<) and the new formula (Silver Atomizer 2021<). In short get the older batches (Black atomizer) this one actually fits all the praise and good comments below. Actually smells like SMW. Avoid the new batches 2021 onwards, they are not it.
This prompted a few members to follow up with offhand comments about which batch they were reviewing, based apparently on the color of the atomizer, as if this is some definitive marker of a formula change, instead of its just being that Armaf listened to the criticism, voiced by several reviewers on YouTube, that the black atomizer clashes with the silver bottle. Suddenly we should all seek out bottles with black atomizers, if we really want something that approximates Silver Mountain Water by Creed.
This is clearly crazy. But there you have it. I happen to have a bottle with the silver sprayer, and maybe my nose is broken, but my side-by-side comparison of Sillage to SMW put Sillage on top. It smells 98% exactly like the Creed, with the only differences being more muted top notes, and what is clearly a much older version of SMW in the drydown, versus the current Creed formula, which is miles away from what SMW used to be. Sillage is richer, deeper, brighter.
Another funny phenomenon is the high number of people who claim that Armafs need to "macerate" in their bottles, preferably with the caps off, after "wasting a few sprays" to let air in, and "sitting for a few months in the dark." Now, I happen to be one of the voices that championed this reality with Creeds several years ago. A fellow blogger and several members of Basenotes criticized me when I said that Creeds start out weak and get much stronger the longer they sit, especially after air is introduced to the bottle. My observation was derided as a nonsensical fiction, and I was perpetuating it because I didn't get how stupid it is for a company to release a product that self-improves.
Of course I was right about it all along, and in the years since then, it has become standard practice for people to openly admit to letting their Creeds macerate in-bottle after initial use. Apparently the same is now true for Armaf perfumes. I've had firsthand experience with this with my bottle of Milestone. When I first tried it, it smelled good but very strong, very floral, and it resembled Chez Bond more than Millésime Impérial. After two years of sitting in my dark basement, the fragrance has relaxed, note separation has dramatically improved, and the heart and base smell nearly identical to MI.
Some people can handle that, and others can't. Sillage seems to need maceration less than Milestone, at least to my nose, but maybe it will improve over time. Armaf is a brand that does things differently; instead of dumping their budget into top notes and letting the rest slide, they go half-hearted on their tops and whole-hog on their bases, which is where Sillage really shines. Something tells me Armaf will release a new Club de Nuit in the next year or so, and I'm excited to see which Creed they go after next.
Just the fact that they go after Creed at all is enough to drive many people nuts. It's funny to read review after review that slams Club de Nuit (Whatever) for being "nothing like" whatever they're cloning. With most clones, this is true, but things are very different with the Club de Nuit line. These aren't your average clone perfumes, and they absolutely are eating Creed's lunch. The money is there for it, and they're spending it wisely.