Understanding Arabian Market Creeds, and the Countless Paranoia-Inducing Inconsistencies in Creed's Packaging

Western Creed on Left; Eastern Creed on Right, with Gold Delete Box

I've always wanted an Arabian market Creed, and I finally bought one. What's so special about the Creeds sold to the Saudis, you ask? Well, not a whole lot, actually. They're still the same old fragrances; it isn't like Green Irish Tweed in Dubai smells like glittering angel spunk or anything. There is an old rumor floating around on Basenotes or Fragrantica that Creed made their Middle Eastern fragrances a touch stronger to better withstand the punishing desert heat, but I believe that's a myth. I'm not after higher concentration, although that would certainly be nice. What I've always liked about the Arabian Creeds is the gold delete on their boxes, i.e., no gold leaf trim around the fragrance name-frame or on the Welsh crest above it. The box itself is uniformly white, and to my knowledge this was how all Creeds looked in that region. 

Here's the funny thing about that: many people have questioned this version of the box and asked if they'd bought a fake when they received it. It elicited a consistently suspicious reaction, mostly from young men who of course stupidly dropped hundreds of dollars on a perfume without researching it first. Those of us who actually read about Creed and obsess over every tidbit of information we can glean from the brand always knew that the Saudi and Far Eastern markets got the gold-delete boxes, while the rest of the world had the gold leaf version. I couldn't tell you the reason for this; I suspect the broader international market had developed a more demanding taste for the brand than Europe or America had, and thus Creed cut down on the slightly pricier detail of adding gold leaf to their boxes to maintain profit margins while still quasi-mass-producing their fragrances. More boxes needed? Make them a little cheaper. Makes sense to me. 

But of course Creed never really addresses its packaging discrepancies, which leaves buyers wondering. The bottles of Fleurissimo pictured above are from different eras, with the newer Western bottle on the left boasting beautiful gold trim on its box and an English-language leaflet, and the Arabian bottle on the right, the bottle I recently purchased, with an even more beautiful gold delete box and Arabic-language leaflet. My bottle is vintage, dating back to 2005, and interestingly it lacks the 1760 embossing under the Welsh crest, while also having a paler green velour name-frame compared to the Western version. When you go back to 2005, you start to creep into a vintage territory with Creed where the packaging details get hazy and harder to understand. I can see how if someone received the Arabian bottle, they would immediately wonder if they'd been conned with a fake. It's a semi-racist knee-jerk response that Westerners have when they see something that they expected would be thoroughly Anglicized is instead bedecked with what looks like a cheaper box and literature printed in a foreign language. 

Last week I joined a vintage Creed enthusiasts group on Facebook, and had a brief chat with one of its founding members about counterfeits. He's been in the game even longer than I have, and told me that when it comes to feminine Creeds, you're almost guaranteed to receive the real deal, even on eBay. He said the exception to this is the recently-released Carmina, which he stated was Creed's real "Aventus for women," (as opposed to the actual Aventus for Her). I told him I had no idea it was that popular, but apparently Carmina is making a splash. I think BlackRock had decided to focus more on the female buyer, which actually makes sense for Creed. I mentioned to him that Love in White and Floralie are also faked, with the former being fairly obvious and the latter more insidious. He pointed out that it would be utterly futile to try to counterfeit Love in Black, given its inimitable bottle, and that virtually all of the clear-glass feminines were virgin territory for fakers, which I must admit sounds right. When was the last time anyone was conned with a dupe of Fleurissimo? Of Jasmin Impératrice Eugénie? Of Fantasia de Fleurs? How many threads have women or their boyfriends posted asking if their bottle of Vanisia or Fleurs de Bulgarie or Tubéreuse Indiana was real? 

The truth is that Creed is two brands split by gender marketing: the "male" Creeds, which are the heralded fragrances of high quality, and the "female" Creeds, which are viewed as if they belong to another brand altogether. The "femme" Millesimes are independent of the rest of the line. Varanis Ridari and I have both made the mistake of claiming that Original Santal was the last of the Millesimes; Love in Black is stamped as a Millesime, and was released three years later, which potentially makes it the last. I overlooked this little fact because like many enthusiasts I tend to forget about the femme line, which seems ridiculous because it is. The feminine fragrances are mostly considered "second-tier" by enthusiasts, although I am not one who shares this view. Fleur de Thé Rose Bulgare is an incredibly gorgeous tea rose fragrance, rather like Tea Rose done on a limitless budget, and with natural ambergris added. I have a review of Fleurissimo pending (provided my bottle hasn't become "eau de bowling shoe"), but remember it as a delicate and creamy white floral with hints of banana-like ylang for extra sweetness, thoroughly beautiful, and hopefully as much in vintage form. Love in Black is a somber but gorgeous perfume, with all the Creed quality there to feel, and Spring Flower is equally magnificent. None of these feminine releases rate as inferior to me. I should do better. 

So I purchased my vintage Fleurissimo with confidence that it is real. But I also marvel at the potential for a less experienced buyer to feel afraid; the packaging is so different! Consider the many variances in Creed packaging, and then ask yourself how anyone knows what the fuck they're buying. There's the Western gold-gilt packaging, and if you go back ten years or so, you have the velour name-frames, the Welsh crest, the 1760 emboss, the gold lettering on the bottom front of the boxes, the lettering on the top, the lettering on the back, the logo-embossed background print on the boxes, the lot number stickers, the velour and flat labeling on the bottles, the atomizers (three generations to consider), the "white ring" under the nozzles (probably the only constant feature), and the question of what are commonalities with fakes. If you can say anything about Creed with 100% confidence, it is that the brand is consistent about its inconsistencies. 

Go back to the mid 2000s and earlier, and things get even weirder. You have the red stamping of various royal crests on the boxes, which look like someone literally hand-stamped them on, which they probably did. You have things like the "sailboat version" of Erolfa, with its pretty little boat painting in the name-frame. You have boxes that have the Creed logo embossed everywhere, and boxes that don't (see below). You have bottles with different cap colors, and some frags that went from opaque to clear caps. You have feminine bottles shaped like masculine bottles. You have different iterations of the "royalty list" on the top of the box, the back of the box, and different versions of the lettering on the bottom front of the box. You have some Creeds that had their names printed right on the glass, and those same Creeds eventually adopted the velvet/velour label. You get into the Arabian market, and you see discrepancies between packaging features there versus here. Because Creed never explained the gold delete feature, one can only speculate, as I have, but regardless of reasoning, it looks badass. Not really sure why I like it so much, but I do. Must be my formal training in graphic design (a BFA in graphic design). For some reason it looks like it makes sense on an Arabian box. Saudi Arabian Royal Water, pictured below, looks beautiful with its silver delete box. 

I imagine dozens of wealthy oil sheiks in Dubai plowing through bottle after bottle of their favorite Creeds, maybe even throwing them around to guests at parties like candy, and Creed struggling to keep up with the demand. Olivier tells his packaging manager, "Get rid of the leafing on all but the lettering, it will speed up box production and keep costs down." He adds, "And lose the full-panel embossing of the company logo on the maculine/unisex boxes." Voila, the Arabian Creed. Clearly the demand was no less for the feminine Creeds, even the more obscure ones like Tubéreuse Indiana.

Or perhaps it isn't so clear. Perhaps Creed simply wanted an easy way to visually differentiate the Eastern market Creeds from their European market counterparts, and so used this simple and cost-effective way to do so. Perhaps it was something that Olivier felt was an apt allusion to an oil sheik's white keffiyeh, which would be a fittingly semi-racist European view. Whatever the case may be, I strongly suspect most of the gold delete boxes have been retired by BlackRock, and Kering will maintain the status quo. 

Add to all of this the imperfections in Creed boxes and bottles, especially the feminine Creeds, with things like bottles with and without bowties, bottles with and without clear corner contouring, bottles with faded lettering, bottles with weirdly marked lot numbers, bottles with faded 'Paris, France' embossing on the glass, and bottles with no laser-etched numbers. The one constant with all Creeds is the clean white ring around the atomizer stem, probably the easiest marker to seek for determining authenticity. 

Everything else is a variable that might or might not be of help.