Camel (Zoologist)

Image by Bryan Ross

Creating a fragrance that balances classical elegance with sensual allure is one of the most challenging tasks in perfumery. If the scent leans too much toward the classical, it risks feeling stuffy; if it pitches too far toward the sensual, it can seem overtly provocative. But when the balance is perfect, the fragrance evokes the image of an unknown woman -- beautiful, vulnerable, timeless, and mysterious. Christian Carbonnel's specialty is Middle Eastern orientals, with a portfolio spanning dozens of rich, resinous, floral, and oud-laden perfumes, so it comes as little surprise that he's the nose behind Camel (2017). This is an excellent fragrance, and, surprisingly, it doesn't try too hard to impress.

I feel a zing of delight upon first spraying it, as it rings out with a bright chord of Nag Champa incense, spicy myrrh, and soft orange zest—just enough to give the first fifteen minutes a freshness and roundness I've only encountered in pricier orientals. There's a palm date note in the pyramid; I'm not sure what that smells like, but my guess is it's the honeyed sweetness that mingles with the heart of amber, cedar, and orange blossom (the zest gradually deepens into the flower), yet I can make out cinnamon, civetone, rose, sandalwood, and tonka bean clearly in the drydown. Camel has a crystalline depth and quality, with every note perfectly balanced, every accord seamlessly connected, and every whiff a pleasure to experience. The Nag Champa aspect lingers throughout, but the way Carbonnel blended the synthetic civet with the florals and woods feels exotic and sultry, despite being standard oriental fare.

The sexiness here is likely in the musks, but to me, Camel reads as an updated take on classics like Arpège and Tabu, with enough classical poise that it never becomes gauche. There are no sharp angles in Camel; the structure is an assemblage of the many curvatures of resins and fibers, the gentle textures of floral softness against woody rasp, with the civet note lending a seductive skank that is sure to attract at least a few animals in the night. If you're familiar with Furyo by Jacques Bogart, you could consider that fragrance a masculine counterpart to Camel, which leans slightly unisex with a feminine tilt due to the prominent florals (rose, jasmine, orange blossom) and its unyielding brightness. This is one of the better offerings in the Zoologist line, and I'm here for it. Good stuff.

Navy for Men (Noxell/CoverGirl)

The year was 1995, fully five years after the release of Navy for women by the Noxell Corp., an absurd time to issue a masculine flanker for what was, even then, a lowbrow drugstore fragrance. CoverGirl, owned by Noxell, in turn owned by Proctor & Gamble, said fuck it, let's goooo, and did it anyway. Those of you who have been reading this blog since the beginning know that I've already reviewed Navy for Men, and you recall that it was the version made by Dana. The Dana formula and the Noxell formula are two completely different fragrances that bear almost no resemblance to each other. Thus I treat them as completely different fragrances, each worthy of their own review. 

But they are in no way equally worthy fragrances. The Dana version isn't bad, per se. But it isn't particularly good, either. I consider it to be the sort of thing a college guy, a cash-strapped undergrad would wear, and hell, it would probably get him laid quite a bit if the rest of him measured up. I've known guys who had no sense of personal style in regard to clothes or fragrance, but they kept good hygiene and could pass for Paul Rudd after a few beers. The jeans-and-t-shirt guys. Dana's Navy is for them. It's a laundry-clean scent, brimming with sweet tangerine and synthetic mints and lavenders and white musks, and it manages to smell like Febreeze if Febreeze smelled good. Why anyone over the age of twenty-two would wear it is beyond me, but I guess a guy could do worse. 

Noxell's original formula is a completely different story. This formula died sometime around 2003, a slow death, I might add, by formula drift that started when CoverGirl sold the rights to Dana sometime in the late nineties. Your window for enjoying the Noxell version was pretty brief, only a few years at best, and it was the sort of fragrance that few outside of the aforementioned demographic would have bothered to avail themselves of. Surviving Noxell Corp. bottles with the Hunt Valley, Maryland address are growing increasingly rare, though they do not yet command anything near unicorn prices. The back of the box and bottle should look like mine, with Noxell on both for deep vintage:

So, how is this one different? Put simply, it's leagues better. Leagues. Don't get me wrong, it's still a drugstore fragrance, but it smells absolutely gorgeous, even thirty years later. It's the smell of the boy's locker room in high school, freshman year. Dihydromyrcenol, up the wazoo. A drop of Calone 1951, but only one small micro-drop, adding New West levels of pink sweetness but with none of the lucidly piney textures overlaying it, except for that Monster-sized juniper berry note that explodes off the top and pervades the entire drydown with its evergreen, gin-like aromatic magic. If you need a straight-up juniper berry fragrance, you'll be hard-pressed to find one better than Navy for Men by Noxell.

The fragrance as a whole has a passing resemblance to things like Drakkar Noir (1982), Horizon by Guy Laroche (1993), and Polo Sport (1994), with Polo likely serving as CoverGirl's inspiration, given its release the year before. Yes, Navy is a nineties locker room all bottled up in blue, but it's also the smell of your neighbor's house in 1996 when you went over to play video games with their son. A few sprays of this stuff fills several rooms. It's deodorant-fresh and blatantly synthetic, yet it encapsulates everything Pierre Bourdon meant when he described creating "a new kind of freshness"—though he wasn't the nose behind Navy, and I have no clue who was. I also have no idea what the feminine version smells like, but I imagine it's worlds apart from the masculine one, given their five-year age gap. CoverGirl had a Ken doll type in mind with this flanker. 

Of note is the fact that Navy for Men smells good, really good, and better than a number of super expensive niche fragrances that I reviewed this year and last. This reinforces the point I made in my previous article: Are niche fragrances a rip-off, especially if you have access to these classic scents that are still made well today? Vintage Navy could easily be bottled in a swanky, blinged-out bottle and marked up to $150 for an ounce, and I doubt anyone would suspect it came from a drugstore. They'd probably say, "Oh, this is that locker room scent from your childhood, except done right." Well, no. No, it isn't. It's literally that locker room scent from your childhood. And that's how far we've fallen since then. 

Comparing "F" Batches of SMW

A Montage Using A.I. Generated Imagery
(Except for the Bottle)

The new generation of Creed fragrances now come with batch codes starting with an "F" followed by numerals. Unlike previous codes, these are harder to decipher, and none of the online cosmetic code checkers have been updated to read them. When I tried plugging one in, I got an error message. Recently, I received my second bottle of Silver Mountain Water, a 100 ml size, and noticed the batch code differs from my 50 ml bottle, which still has about an ounce left. There's a notable difference in scent and performance between the two bottles, as Creed still engages in batch variation.

I suspect the 50 ml bottle is from an older batch. The code is F000160, and when it was new, it had a CK One vibe—fresh florals with a hazy green tea effect that lingered into the drydown, about twenty minutes after application. However, longevity was poor, lasting just ninety minutes to two hours, and the scent's complexity was muted. After about nine months of maceration, the fragrance has become more piquant and defined, with better longevity (around eight hours) and clearer note separation. Now, I can distinctly smell citrus, blackcurrant, petitgrain, a hint of rose, green tea, sandalwood, and musk. No ambergris, though. It seems Creed no longer includes it in SMW, but there’s a subtle hint of Ambroxan, though at a much lower dose than in Armaf's Club de Nuit Sillage.

The 100 ml bottle was a better deal because it had been used a couple of times, prompting the seller to knock seventy-five dollars off the price, bringing the total to $219—a fantastic deal for a non-tester bottle. The code is F000399, and I’m guessing this is a more recent batch, as I’ve read that the newer batches are stronger and fuller-bodied. Indeed, from the first spray (without priming the atomizer), I noticed a difference. This batch is richer, clearer, and a bit more floral. The citrus and metallic notes are louder, the blackcurrant is more prominent, the tea and petitgrain are subtler but more enduring, and the white musks provide impressive longevity—easily ten hours or more. Still no ambergris, though.

This might seem like a minor detail, but for those that are interested in the newer batches of Creed but doubt their tenacity, I want to reassure you, at least when it comes to SMW. I can't speak for other Creed fragrances yet, but with two different "F" batches, my experience has been positive. I have mixed feelings about the loss of the ambergris note. On one hand, it’s a bit disappointing, as it removes some of the classic Creed feel. On the other, the ambergris could sometimes be overwhelming in older Creeds. My vintage bottle of Fleurissimo, for example, has continued to macerate since I first used it in nineteen years, and now that new air has entered the bottle, it has become dominated by an intensely salty ambergris, which gives it a beached flower scent.

It's a great smell, and I'm happy to have it. But Silver Mountain Water is one of those delicate Creed freshies, meant to be subtle and relaxing, not in-your-face. So the absence of extra-salty ambergris isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If I want that, I can look to Royal Water instead, which is likely the most ambergris-forward of the nineties Millesimes. Royal Water is ambergris from the first spray to the final afterglow twelve hours later, and it works because the citrus and aromatics are arranged to complement its salinity. So if you’re considering an "F" batch of SMW, rest assured—everything’s fine.

Is High-End Niche a Rip-Off?

Snippets of my Collection . . . Niche-Like

This year, I've been diving into Zoologist fragrances, and after experiencing Bee, I reached a conclusion: a significant portion of the high-end niche fragrance sector seems to be indulging in a nostalgic revival of the seventies, eighties, and early nineties, tailored for the affluent. Earlier today, while listening to Ramsey on YouTube, I heard him harshly criticize Luca Turin's review of Des Cendres by Les Abstraits, even going so far as to call Turin a "bowel movement" and question his credibility as a fragrance reviewer. While I share some of Ramsey's concerns regarding Turin, I wonder if he's missing the broader significance of Turin's role in the fragrance community. Yes, there is a point.

When Perfumes: The Guide was released in 2008, it coincided with the peak of Creed's popularity, just a couple of years before the launch of Aventus. Turin's disdain for Creed was apparent, despite his positive reviews of Green Irish Tweed and Neroli Sauvage. The review that made me question Turin's judgment was his one-star assessment of Silver Mountain Water, which he described as "An unpleasant, hissy-metallic 'fresh' fragrance with a strange note of wood glue amid the din." It wasn't the fact that Turin disliked SMW that surprised me; it was the inconsistency. SMW is a Pierre Bourdon creation, and Turin had previously praised Bourdon as a "genius" in his review of Kouros. Yet, aside from GIT, nearly every Bourdon Creed was panned by Turin.

What's even stranger is that most of Bourdon's fragrances for designer brands also received poor reviews. Turin’s wife, Tania Sanchez, said that Joop! Homme smelled like cheap floor cleaner, but "coulda been a contender," whatever that means. She also misidentified Bourdon's Individuel for Montblanc as a "citrus green" fragrance, and criticized it as well. Millesime Imperial and Erolfa, both Bourdon creations, were dismissed by Turin as a "mini-GIT" and "thoroughly nasty," respectively. Sanchez gave The Brun two stars, calling it an "interesting greasy-woodsmoke idea" that fell short. Despite Turin's regard for Bourdon, his rating of Bourdon's catalog averages just two stars. It's puzzling, to say the least, and had me wondering for a long time.

Then it hit me. Luca Turin's views on Creed are less about the fragrances themselves and more about what Creed represented in the 2000s. The brand became known for taking underrated designer fragrances and "upgrading" them into "luxe" versions—perfumes that the public was already familiar with, but marketed as superior. The scandal surrounding Olivier Creed's alleged theft of these formulas was the talk of the town, with insiders like Turin casting shade on the house for practices such as retooling Bourdon's Individuel into Original Santal. One can infer from Turin's negativity that he disapproved of this practice. On the surface, it seems like an illegitimate complaint, made worse by the fact that Bourdon was the true author of the Creeds that Turin disparaged.

But after pondering it for years, it's clear that Turin's issue with Creed had nothing to do with the fragrances themselves, but everything to do with their provenance. If you enjoy Original Santal, why not just buy Individuel? It costs a tenth of the price and smells 98% identical. Is that 2% difference in note balance and slightly higher material quality worth $250? (The Guide was released when 120ml bottles were priced around $275.) To be fair, Turin has a valid point here. Let's be honest: if I'm choosing between Cool Water and Green Irish Tweed, knowing both are by Pierre Bourdon, and also knowing neither smells particularly natural, am I automatically going to spring for GIT? Probably not.

Similarly, if I take Mario Valentino's Ocean Rain, a fragrance I bought years ago for under forty dollars, and wear it for a week—a scent formulated by Edmond Roudnitska, Bourdon's mentor—would I then feel compelled to spend Creed money on Bourdon's Erolfa? I can achieve 80% of Erolfa's effect with Ocean Rain at 80% less cost. Sure, Erolfa is a Bourdon creation, and since Creed owns the formula, it smells like an expensive, well-made aquatic. But Bourdon was Roudnitska's student, and the master created Ocean Rain using mostly synthetic materials that few perfumers knew how to use in the late eighties. Even now, at discontinued unicorn prices, Ocean Rain costs less than a brand-new bottle of Creed. So why bother with the expensive stuff?

The question of "why bother with expensive" looms large in this discussion, as much of high-end niche perfumery focuses on superlative materials crafted into artistic compositions, which are then spun off into luxury ranges like Les Abstraits. But consider what Des Cendres represents: a woody-green chypre hybrid loaded with rich smoky and earthy notes—the kind of fragrance you supposedly can't get for less nowadays. Well, if you look at snapshots of my personal collection, you'll see that I have relatively inexpensive but undeniably old and outdated designer fragrances. And guess what? Many of them smell like they could easily be expensive niche fragrances.

My bottle of Bamboo by Franck Olivier, for example, is rich and densely woody, with a camphorous freshness and a spartan structure befitting some hipster New York indie brand that would charge a small fortune for an ounce. If you're unfamiliar with perfume, that indie approach might seem appealing, but once you realize that fragrances like Jacomo's Silences, Ungaro III, and Krizia Uomo all possess an intensity and richness associated with luxury goods, you might start to wonder why those brands didn't charge more. The answer is simple—they charged what they needed to make a profit. They didn't even come close to ripping off their customers because they didn't need to. The perfumes spoke for themselves, and if Krizia wanted $90 for 100 milliliters, that was more than enough to cover manufacturing costs and secure a 50% profit margin. Perfume margins are huge; that's why so many niche brands exist.

Just as Luca Turin was perpetually annoyed by Olivier Creed's business model of transforming affordable designer fragrances into pristine white swans for aristocratic consumption, I find myself constantly irked by niche brands that release fragrances accompanied by marketing copy filled with exotic ingredients like "herbal top notes of Siberian artemisia, heart accords of Australian cedarwood and Turkish fig leaf, and a base of Estonian white birch and Pacific ambergris." Meanwhile, I can stop by my local rack store, grab a bottle of Salvatore Ferragamo Pour Homme for $25, and achieve the same effect as that $300 "global tour in a bottle." Why would I buy Fougere Bengale when I have Vermeil for Men? What justifies a purchase of Mure et Musc when I can wear Creation de Minuit by Lapidus? What niche fragrance surpasses Bourdon's Kouros in its sheer beauty? What niche fragrance outshines Lapidus Pour Homme in its audacity? What $250 fougere from a warrant-wielding British concern could possibly compete with the proletarian versatility of Brut?

Most of the woody "cigar box" (as Turin called them) masculine fragrances of the eighties and nineties were composed with a dozen notes, durable materials, by capable and sometimes legendary perfumers. They were sold at department stores for middle-class money for years, and nobody needed a L'Artisan or a Creed to show them up. In those days, L'Artisan and Creed didn't even try. If you can remember that perfumery practices over the last twenty years have shifted toward the one percenters and away from the 99%, you can look forward to a future era where people's interests drift back downmarket to fragrances that can be made economically without smelling "cheap." And even if they did smell cheap, they smelled good, which is actually different from smelling cheap.

In closing, I recently bought a bottle of Silver Mountain Water on eBay, and the seller, known for its excellent service and honesty, included a sample from their own perfume line. I sprayed it on my hand and recoiled in disgust—it smelled like deck chair varnish. It made me realize that anyone can create a "niche" brand nowadays. All you need to do is mix some Perfumer's Apprentice chemicals into a jar of perfumer's alcohol, swirl it a few times, and cap it. You don't even need a label—just call it an "indie" or "niche" brand, charge a hundred bucks for three ounces, and figure out the rest later. But that's not luxury. I want to enjoy myself, and my nose doesn't wander from price tag to price tag. True luxury is to buy something that exceeds expectations and brings joy every time it is worn. Whether it costs $40 or $400, the questions remain the same: Do I like this? Would I buy it again? If the answer to both is yes, then I've won.

The "Right" Way & The "Wrong" Way: Where to Buy Fragrances?

Recently, at least three people have engaged me in conversations about online perfume merchants, their product experiences, and where I buy my pricier stuff, particularly Creed fragrances. This is always an interesting topic for me because the perfume hunt is nearly the entire thrill: there’s almost something anticlimactic about actually receiving and using the product.

This might surprise some, but it's the truth, and I can’t lie to you: ninety-nine percent of my fragrance purchases are made on eBay. The remaining 1% is split evenly between Amazon and Fragrancenet. What may also surprise readers is the fact that my eBay purchases have been nearly 100% satisfactory, while my experiences with Amazon and Fragrancenet have been just okay, though not terrible. On average, I would say that eBay has the best selection of genuine vintage fragrances, so for those who are after scents from the seventies, eighties, or nineties, I can’t think of a better place to find them.

eBay gets a bad rap because it’s littered with counterfeiters, speculative pricing, grossly variable return policies, and it just feels like the Wild West of the fragrance world. When it comes to counterfeits, there are some basic rules of thumb. First, know your product. Don’t jump on eBay looking to find Bleu de Chanel in any concentration without having ever once laid eyes on an actual bottle of Chanel. Second, don’t buy Chanel on eBay. Of all the designers, Chanel has the tightest grip on its distribution channels and doesn’t allow "grey market" bottles to siphon onto discounter or auction sites.

Third, know your prices. When thinking about value, especially vintage value, you’re thinking of inflation, not arbitrary greedy-boy pricing. There are plenty of guys sitting in their underwear in mom’s basement who get their hands on bottles of Balenciaga pour Homme, Patou pour Homme, Fendi Donna, and declare that it’s worth a gajillion dollars. That doesn’t mean it’s actually worth a gajillion dollars. If it was going for $45 at Macy’s in 1989, adjust for 2024 dollars, add a twenty percent profit margin for the seller, and there’s your price. The Bureau of Labor Statistics will crunch the numbers for you. It’s not hard.

“But Bryan,” you shout, “how would I know what it cost in 1989?” That loops back to the first rule: know your product. Do your research. Ask around. Look for old magazine ads. Pick a year to go by, with the last known year of production being a good bet, and go from there. If you’re looking at something like Grey Flannel by Geoffrey Beene, there is quite a bit to read. You can even read my article about its corporate distribution history for pointers. Getting into vintage perfume isn’t just about loving vintage perfume; it’s about loving what there is to know about it, and doing that legwork regularly. There’s no joy in scoring a bottle of Patou pour Homme for $900 if you don’t know much about it.

Fourth, don’t worry about returns. I know, that sounds insane. How can you not worry about returns when you’re buying something with real money? You need to know you can get your money back, right? Here’s the problem with expecting a great return policy on a perfume: you’re already buying a return to begin with. If you’re buying a bottle of Creed on Fragrancenet, you’re probably not getting a brand-new bottle. Even if you are, it’s still a kickback bottle from another merchant. It’s been sitting in a warehouse for months, possibly even years, and the conditions in that warehouse are a complete mystery. So no, if you’re laying down two hundred dollars on a bottle of stale Creed just so you can own a Creed for that amount and not twice as much, don’t get all sniffy-sniffy back-in-the-box.

I don’t want your returned bottle of a merchant kickback Creed. You send it back to Fragrancenet, and they’ll put it right back on sale the next day. Then some other guy will buy it, thinking he’s defeated the universe and stolen a Creed at designer prices. And now he gets your sloppy seconds. You get . . . your money back. What’s the point? Fifth, know you’re insane. Let me say that another way: Know. You. Are. Insane. You are scouring the internet in your spare time looking for a bottle of something you don’t want to buy from the proprietary source. You are expecting perfection. You are expecting to thread the needle of good fortune every time. And often you succeed. Often you are right. The perfume arrives looking and smelling great, and you win.

But every once in a blue moon, the chips fall wrong, and you get something with a defect in smell, container, or both. Again, understand this: you are the buyer, and because you are the buyer, the phrase “buyer beware” applies every time you pull the trigger. You want your niche fragrance from an eBay merchant to be "as advertised"? Read the ad, make sure the pictures are of the actual product and not stock images, and if still in doubt, send a message and ask questions. Cover all your bases before you purchase so that you understand what you’re in for, and there are few, if any, surprises. If you are a vintage fanatic, recognize the added layer of risk inherent in that pursuit. Combine it with the regular risks, and tally up your risk tolerance metric, but be honest with yourself about it. Nobody bullshits you better than you.

If vintage isn’t your thing, and you’re content with buying new bottles of new fragrances, then it’s all about your taste. Are you an Amazon guy or an eBayer? Does Fragrancenet, FragranceX, or Mercari work for you? Figure it out. The only way is to try them. Apply the rules I’ve listed here to yourself, put yourself in the reality framework necessary for such a fantastic endeavor, and go for it. If you’re an impulse buyer, you’ll be more vulnerable to expensive errors. Here’s an easy example: you’re desperate to try Creed’s new Carmina, and you find it on eBay for $128 from Taiwan or Hong Kong. Score! Except, not a score. Counterfeit. Slow down. Be real. Live in the real world for a few seconds before hitting the “Buy Now” button. Spare your bank account. Buy from Taiwan or Hong Kong, and kiss your investment goodbye.

The nice thing about eBay is that shipping is often free. The serious merchants on eBay will ship quickly, and the best will get the product to you within four days. It doesn’t get much better than that. Buying is easy, eBay remembers your info, you won’t get hacked, and the more you buy (and pay fast), the better your eBay rating, which only improves service from top-tier merchants. The longest I’ve ever had to wait for an eBay purchase is three weeks, and that only happened once, with a safety razor I bought in 2013. To date, I’ve only received one wrong product, a bottle of Myrsol Formula K (which I reviewed), when I had actually ordered Formula C. I kept the K. Why wouldn’t I keep the K? I don’t know K from C from any of the other Myrsols, and I was purchasing it to review it, so what the hell. I kept it, reviewed it, and didn’t regret it—it was a terrific peppermint splash that is unfortunately much harder to come by these days.

Fragrancenet has been a different story. Every purchase I’ve made there has taken a long time to arrive, sometimes more than three weeks. One purchase took nearly two months, with no discernible reason for the delay. Their customer service was the predictable outsourced call center experience. The representative couldn’t have cared less about my bottle of Green Irish Tweed, and I could barely understand a word he was saying. I used to buy my Creeds exclusively from Fragrancenet, but two of my GITs were stale. Two were fresh, but not quite as fresh as the one I bought directly from Creed. The retail-purchased bottle stood out with stellar, beast-mode performance. One GIT from Fragrancenet was so stale and “off” that it resembled Aspen more than GIT. Even the top notes were awfully wintergreen-y for GIT, and I resented that.

Amazon has been a mixed bag as well. The big issue with Amazon is long delivery times and stolen packages. I’ve had two packages stolen or lost by Amazon, and I suspect that the Amazon truck is followed by package thieves (most eBay retailers use the plain old federal snail-mail Post Office). Amazon’s customer service is middling, and their website is surprisingly difficult to navigate. It once took me fifteen minutes to find the service bot, and another five to figure out how to use it, only to have it not help me at all, and in fact, blame me for the issue (item not yet delivered, site saying it was delivered). I ended up receiving the product the next day, but I find it odd that Amazon’s site is prone to delivery update failures. The “Your Item Has Been Delivered” alert was wrong not once, but twice in one year, and after that, I slowed down on buying from them. I don’t mind waiting for a fragrance, but don’t tell me I have the fragrance when it hasn’t even been put out for delivery yet, and don’t blame me for getting it wrong.

I haven’t tried FragranceX or Mercari, and I’ve heard the latter is riddled with sketchy merchants and fakes. I have purchased fragrances on Etsy, but only small-batch indie stuff. I tend to go after vintage Pinaud products, affordable grey market zombie label fragrances (like Van Cleef & Arpels, Halston, etc.), and Creeds, vintage or new. eBay is my go-to. If I can get a better price on a new fragrance, Amazon is an option, as I did recently with Brut. But that is very rare, especially since I don’t have Prime and usually pay for shipping. Sure, tax is a hassle, but tax is tax no matter where you buy.

In closing, a word about “Inspector Gadgeting” online merchants. I’ve met several people over the years who will dig into the business documents and licensing of various grey market retailers and then warn me to watch out for them. They’ll say things like, “They folded in one state and opened shop again in another,” or “They’re only making $100K a year,” or “They only have four or five employees.” I’ll be honest: I couldn’t care less about that. I don’t care where you finagled your business papers, where you set up shop today vs. yesterday, how many people are on your payroll, or how you rate with the BBB. What I care about is if you can get me the hard-to-find perfume within a week, full bottle, on the money. If you can do that, I can forgive a few blemishes, signs of a returned product, etc. But that’s entirely my taste in buying. I understand that others may blanche at the same prospects that I’m comfortable with and will look elsewhere. C’est la vie!

Update 9/1/24:

A few minutes ago, a reader sent me a message on Fragrantica claiming that Fragrancenet has been selling mass numbers of "used" Creed Silver Mountain Water bottles on eBay (roughly 95% to 99% full) for less than eighty dollars per 100 ml bottle. He claims that he has amassed a sizable Creed collection by "getting in" on these grey market bargains, which of course could then be resold at a huge profit. My take? Bullshit. 

Bee (Zoologist)

In the past decade, there has been a renewed interest in vanilla and tonka fragrances. And when I say "vanilla and tonka," I mean popped-collar, slicked hair, dude-bro, chad-swaggering clubber juice, with all eyes on the prize, if you get me. The sensitive, introspective, soul-searching, manna-eating perfumes for humble people.

If you want the proletariat or petite bourgeoisie version, Azzaro and Thierry Mugler have you covered with their The Most Wanted and A*Men frags, which are basically sweetened woody tonkas on steroids. For an aristocratic touch, opt for something by Guerlain or Zoologist, particularly Cristiano Canali's Bee from the latter. Bee adopts a similarly dense sweetness, using materials that smell far sturdier than others, while creating a comparable scent cloud of "Hey, look at me!" For $175, you too can smell like a bird catcher. 

It's easy to get caught up in Zoologist's slightly gimmicky marketing and view Bee as a studied reconstruction of honeybee wax and queen pods brimming with royal jelly. Perhaps that's what Canali intended to convey—and to some extent, I think he succeeds. But let's not miss the forest for the trees. This is sweet swank for guys, crafted to help them attract whoever they're pursuing. If you're looking for the finest in that genre, here it is. 

Racquet Club (MEM Company)

My girlfriend and I went out to lunch recently, and after our meal we stopped at a nearby Goodwill to poke around a little. She bought DVDs (we still use a CRT television) and I was shocked to find a full 118 milliliter bottle of deep vintage (pre-Renaissance Cosmetics) MEM Company Racquet Club cologne splash, which led to the salesgirl begrudgingly unlocking the display case. The price? Twelve dollars. Sold. 

My reference points for Racquet Club aren't great. I'm not one of those guys that thinks twenty-first century perfumes suck, or that perfumery died when oakmoss and animalic-resinous materials went out of style, so I was never mired for more than ten minutes in stuff from the sixties and seventies. Stuff like Monsieur Rochas (1969), N°19 (1971), Lacoste (1984), and the original Lacoste Eau de Sport by Jean Patou (1968), as well as Givenchy III (1970) and Old Spice Lime (1965) are what I use for comparison, and MEM's fragrance doesn't really align well with any of them, other than perhaps Monsieur Rochas and Lacoste Eau de Sport. Released in 1978, Racquet Club is an early iteration of a standard masculine pre-eighties sport scent, with the obvious reference to sport in its name, and a fresh, citrus-aromatic scent in its plain, working man's flacon. 

This was drugstore fare in the late seventies, and my bottle probably cost between four and seven dollars in its release year (roughly between $18 and $30 adjusted for inflation). Not ridiculously expensive, but also not dirt cheap, either. The English Leather flagship of the Austrian MEM Company clearly served as the template for Racquet Club, as its burnished citrus is hinted at here, but the latter scent is brighter and fresher, with crisp lemon, lime, bergamot, lavender, and geranium, followed by clary sage and sweet coumarin with a hint of cured tobacco leaf in the base. What strikes me is the quality of materials, and how well they've held up -- this cologne dances and swirls upon application, its notes shimmering, its citrus and lavender as bright as the morning sun. Its mellow/sweet drydown is equally rich and natural in feel, making the entire wearing a true "vintage" experience. They don't make 'em like they used to.

My takeaway from it is that seventies sport frags were a gajillion miles away from what gets called "sport" in 2024, but I already knew that. Those who are just getting into fragrance and are interested in the sport genre would be well served to investigate things like Racquet Club, Pino Silvestre Sport, Claiborne Sport, and Adidas Sport Field, as well as Lacoste Eau de Sport, Sport de Paco Rabanne, Basix by Aramis, Jōvan Sport Scent, and Boss Sport. The world was very different, very different indeed.

Macaque (Zoologist)

Sarah McCartney is the perfumer for 4160 Tuesdays, a brand she founded several years ago. It has, by my count, four thousand, one hundred and sixty perfumes, so the name is fitting. I’ve never smelled anything by Sarah before, and approached Macaque with an open mind, hoping for the best as always. I have to say, my mind isn't as open as it was pre-Macaque. I don't care for this fragrance. Frankly, I hate it.

I'm not exactly sure what I'm smelling, but it’s a note I've encountered before in a dozen niche perfumes, including some from the Zoologist line. It’s a resinous, incense-like, spicy-woody accord that I believe is pre-made, similar to the classic bases used by perfumers and industry figures like Bernard Chant and Ernest Shiftan. It has a distinct olibanum characteristic, yet there’s also a silvery incense facet that dries down to a funky, incense-infused church pew wood note. It's overbearing and whenever it's in a fragrance, it's pretty much the whole fragrance. It's here in Macaque, and McCartney threw in a soapy jasmine reconstruction to try and balance it, but no dice. Overall, and within the context of having encountered this accord many times before (don't ask me which fragrances, I couldn't tell you after having smelled over seven hundred of them), I'm calling it and saying it's a bullshit move for a perfumer to use it. 

You're not creating a perfume; you're sandwiching this monster base between two tiddlywinks notes of green apple and Hedione, with some Jasmone and a few other pricey floral musks. Despite all efforts to make it smell crisp and fresh, it actually comes across as heavy and balsamic, like some kind of oriental fragrance that fell out of the sky and landed on a store shelf in 1961. I wouldn't want a bottle of this—my girlfriend found it disgusting after one sniff, and enough already with these weird resinous perfumes.

Club de Nuit Intense Man Limited Edition Parfum 2024 (Pre-2013 Aventus, 96% Spot-On)

It's 2024, and that means Creed's Aventus was released fourteen years ago. 

Man, I feel old. 

I never did jump on the Aventus bandwagon. Why, you ask? I have my reasons. I was there, okay kids? I was there. I was there when Creed released Aventus in 2010. I was there for the cluster-fuck initial response from literally every dude on Basenotes and Badger & Blade. I witnessed thread after thread of guys kvetching that it smelled more like a designer fragrance than a luxury redux; this was an original Creed that most guys felt belonged on the counter at Macy's. 

Then a predictable thing happened: guys started calling it a "panty-dropper." A handful of testosterone-laden and grossly immature young men had successful sexual encounters wearing Aventus, and ascribed magical powers to Jean-Christophe Hérault's one-off fruity/smoky fougère. But the problem with Creed's Aventus isn't its popularity with obnoxious jocks, many of whom are not financially well-off, but are merely misguided into spending $300+ for 100 ml of fragrance. The problem with Aventus is Aventus. 

To understand what I mean, let's back up a tick and look at another famous Creed, Pierre Bourdon's Green Irish Tweed (1985). For many years, I wore GIT exclusively when I wore Creed. I chose it over Aventus every time, and it wasn't a difficult choice. To me, GIT is more than an original perfume -- it is a great perfume, the obvious work of a master, simply because its original (pre-2010) formula was sublimely beautiful from start to finish, with the smoothest, richest sandalwood I've ever smelled in a masculine. 

Aventus, on the other hand, has always seemed a bit overrated to me. It struck me as being insanely popular in the industry, among insiders and those in the know, not solely because of its quality, but because Erwin Creed and JC Hérault had stumbled upon an olfactory concept that had never been done before. In all the decades of fruity-woody masculines, nobody had ever thought to combine pineapple, a spritz of sour citrus, red apple, rose, birch, patchouli, and musk in this particular configuration. There is also evidence that Creed wasn't entirely sold on it; the house released Spice and Wood in the Royal Exclusives line the same year, which clearly mods Aventus with the apple, birch, and spices pushed forward. GIT was released with confidence, while Aventus felt tentative. 

And how did early iterations of Aventus smell? I will never forget its ashy redolence, a piquant pineapple and apple accord laced together with bitter bergamot and something very sour in the periphery, perhaps lime and/or a hint of calamondin. This quickly dried down to a sparkly midsection of ethereal fruits, resembling a misty blend of the top notes, combined with a very arid and surprisingly prominent rose on the brink of withering. This stage lasted only an hour before being overtaken by an intense burst of birch and oakmoss, which gave the entire third act a one-dimensional feel, lacking in dynamism or depth -- especially disappointing after such a buoyant start.

What never ceases to amaze me about Aventus is how often people get its description wrong. Few mention the prominent red apple note, instead obsessing over the pineapple, which I barely detected in any batch. To my nose, the pineapple adds an extra dimension of sweetness and juiciness to the apple, creating a novel fruitiness unlike anything you'll find at the greengrocer. There's also a clever little lavender hidden in the top, followed by a bone-dry whiff of very well disguised coumarin in the heart. And why is Aventus described as smoky? I understand the comparison, but I could never shake the impression of dirty paper money -- the unmistakable smell of federal currency ink -- whenever I wore it. The birch and moss are too smooth to be likened to smog. They almost resemble the scent of magazine or glossy catalog paper, which is likely why so many people subliminally associated Aventus with department stores in 2010. 

Put simply, Aventus smelled -- using past tense since I haven't tried new batches -- very good: sleek, erudite, and as serious as John Lennon with Yoko Ono. However, it never smelled truly great. It was a modern, quasi-designer blend crafted with superlative materials by a talented young nose, with art direction from an indifferent and exceptionally fortunate Erwin. Despite what Gabe Oppenheim wrote about it in his book, I find it hard to believe that Olivier didn't have a hand in the formula, as it has a somewhat unsubtle and clumsy base -- traits that are characteristic of his work. Aventus is, by my account, a fairly monotone drydown that lasts for ages, often fading in and out of the wearer's perception. 

Which brings me to Armaf's Club de Nuit Intense Man Limited Edition Parfum, 2024 batch. This stuff is bizarre in that the packaging cost alone must account for the majority of the price—$70 for 105 ml. With all the elaborate presentation, $60 of that is entirely box and bottle design. The fragrance? Ninety-six percent identical to old-school Aventus from 2010 to 2012. It has the red apple. It has the pineapple. It even has a few drops of blackcurrant. Where it diverges is in the citrus, with an intense lime note that was present in Aventus but never as prominent as in the first ten minutes of this Armaf scent. For about ten seconds, there's a bit of a metallic twang, but it doesn’t last long enough to be concerning. There’s a touch of muted rose and patchouli, some elegant birch and musk, and it’s definitely a fruity batch of the old Redford juice. The quality of materials is high—almost Creed level in the heart and base, which I wasn’t expecting. This is excellent stuff.

Why did I finally jump on the Aventus bandwagon now? What Aventus needed and deserved was a hefty dose of humble pie. For less than $100, I can wear CdNIM Special Edition Parfum, and after the first few minutes of slightly substandard top notes, enjoy a fragrance so close to Creed that spending Creed money seems utterly pointless. The ambroxan in Sterling’s formulation is blended into the woods so beautifully that, in a blind test, I’d likely identify it as Creed. I’ve always associated this scent profile with autumn, and I suspect that’s when I’ll fully appreciate it, but I plan on wearing it a bit more this summer to see how it performs. Easily the best of the Club de Nuit line, it makes me wonder why anyone bothers with the original anymore. Who still buys that stuff? It’s all right here. Get it while you can—Armaf will probably discontinue it.

Dragonfly Edition 2021 (Zoologist)

I recently wrote a review for Club de Nuit Sillage on Fragrantica in which I mentioned that I think Armaf bullshits its customers with misleading "note pyramids," perhaps to shift their attention away from whatever they're cloning. In the case of CdNS, the pyramid is identical to Silver Mountain Water, yet they embellish it with claims that it contains violet leaf and various florals. Meanwhile, all I smell is citrus, green tea, blackcurrant, light woods, ambergris, and musk. Pretty much identical to vintage SMW. 

Zoologist would be well served to avoid the Armaf game, and just tell people what their fragrances are about in straightforward language. Parsing the pyramid for Dragonfly is almost as difficult as reading the bible; there are too many things listed that I do not smell, and several things that wallop the nose but don't appear in the literature. The company cites twenty notes, but I only smell angelica and citrus in the top, geranium and rose in the mid with a little more citrus, and a very sheer musk in the base. The fragrance reads as a reconstruction of a wild rose, perhaps Rosa rugosa, a species with an incredible lemony-fresh scent that illuminates gardens and carries for miles, exactly the sort of natural and beautiful floral that someone like Céline Barel would wear (and the polar opposite of her horrendous Squid), an approachable and unisex rose that smells natural. Great!

I would quibble with the price, as I often do with Zoologist, but a full bottle of this smells like it's worth it to me. How many natural wild rose fragrances are there? How many smell so literally and kinetically like the actual flower? The green-bramble theme of the fragrance is deceptively difficult to get right, as the richness of the flower can overshadow the twiggier underpinnings of the bush itself, yet Barel manages to capture the vibe of the entire plant, and she makes it look easy. Dragonfly 2021 is well worth it, and one of a kind.