Club de Nuit Iconic (Armaf)

Bergamot, Tobacco, Ginger, & Vetiver

I went into this one expecting a Creed clone, and I wasn't disappointed. Club de Nuit Iconic, released in 2022, hit the usual YouTube and TikTok review scene as a supposed clone of Bleu de Chanel. Countless broccoli heads and fragbros made the comparison, not because they truly believed it, but because it's what everyone else was saying. 

Having owned and worn a bottle of Creed's Tabaróme Millésime (2000), I viewed Iconic by a different light. Tabaróme Millésime was incredibly important to the fragrance zeitgeist of the 2010s, arguably in the same league as Aventus, yet nobody recognizes it as such. This is because it's a fairly understated and pallid fragrance, and is often overlooked, even among Creed fans. It's also a simple composition: bergamot, ginger, tobacco, vetiver, on a base of Ambroxan, with a watery melon ala Millésime Impérial tying it all together. Bleu de Chanel (2010) is a more complex arrangement of pink pepper, nutmeg, mint, ginger, jasmine, grapefruit, labdanum, incense, patchouli, and synthetic sandalwood, and it smells beefier, mintier, and far more woody-floral, with a flinty whiff of smoke via the incense materials. If you recall vintage Bleu, you remember Aqua Velva on steroids. 

Weirdly, Tabaróme Millésime smells like a simplified Bleu. I don't know if it's the interplay of bergamot, ginger, and slightly sweet tobacco leaf, or the way the nutty vetiver plays off the aromatics, but that particular Creed reads to me like a precursor to Polge's Chanel. Likewise, Club de Nuit Iconic smells virtually identical to vintage Tabaróme Millésime, and in my estimation is yet another Creed clone by Armaf—and a damn good one, I might add. Crisp citrus, ginger, slightly burly-sweet cured tobacco, and transparent vetiver, with a whisper of remarkably restrained (for Armaf) Ambroxan and white musk in the base. This isn't a heavy or dense fragrance, and it feels just as watery and indistinct as Tabaróme Millésime. There's a bit of a nondescript melon thing going on somewhere in the mid, but it feels like a molecule and never really elucidates a definite fruit. 

Does it smell anything like Bleu? Only as much as Tabaróme Millésime smells like Bleu. So, yes, sort of. A weaker, simpler, proto-Bleu de Chanel. The blue bottle makes everyone think it's absolutely a Chanel clone, but I think it's merely a successful misdirection by Armaf. Advertise the fragrance as a Tabaróme Millésime clone and fewer guys will go after it. Make them think it's cloning Bleu, and social media lights up right on schedule, like Fragrantica's review section is Kevin McCallister's house.