Club de Nuit Élite (Armaf)

Armaf is making its move. The brand made its bones in 2015 with its first serious Creed clone, Club de Nuit Intense for men, an unabashed chromo of Aventus, and it hasn't looked back since. With varying degrees of success, it has offered the general public viable and in some cases superior alternatives to vintage formula Creeds. Club de Nuit Sillage (2020) is one such case of a better alternative, smelling rich and dimensional in a way F-batch Silver Mountain Water never did. Unlike other brands, Armaf doesn't just mindlessly cash-grab to take advantage of the unique circumstances in the superhot fragrance industry that dictate the dubious legality of outright copying another entity's commercial product. They put effort into making their copies more desirable than their templates. 

L'Oréal's first Creed release is Iris Debonair, and already the fragrance has positive buzz. This is a good sign. The big fear was that Creed's quality would take an irrevocable hit, and the magic would disappear. The truth is, their quality took some modicum of a hit when Kering Beauté took over back in October of 2023, and Absolu Aventus hit shelves. Sure, Absolu was a success and received favorably, but dig a little deeper into the feedback online, and you find that many weren't entirely sold. Even those who bought bottles and backup bottles acquiesced to the possibility that its lack of real ambergris tincture and top-dollar naturals was a problem, price factored in. 

The BlackRock era signalled that this change was coming, with the 2021 release of Wind Flowers, the first and last Creed released in a Chanel-style bottle with artificial coloring in the liquid (weird to see, as Olivier Creed still had a significant hand in production), along with Viking Cologne and the Aventus oil. But Kering really shifted the output and was aggressive in its approach, releasing 13 fragrances in the span of 3 years, starting with Absolu, and including gamechangers like Carmina and Oud Zarian, the former of which was the start of a new stylistic approach for Creed in the form of an herbal rose-jam floral. After Carmina, this novel rose accord appeared in several feminines, including Fragraria, Eladaria, and Kering's final release in March of this year, Wild Vetiver. 

To me, Wild Vetiver was an interesting release. Before I get into a summation of my personal opinion on the fragrance, I'll highlight how it was received more broadly: Creed Facebook groups and fragrance forums saw men everywhere expressing excitement that they were finally releasing a new vetiver, as Creed has always released pleasing vetivers, starting with Vétiver '48, and including the unicorn Bayrhum-Vetiver, Original Vetiver, and Vetiver Geranium. The anticipation was that Wild Vetiver would adopt the somewhat less natural post-buyout Creed style, but still smell green and fresh and utterly fantastic. 

You could hear the bottom fall out when it landed. At first, guys were in denial, saying they loved it, and it was their new favorite. But the enthusiasm faded quickly, and I started reading comments like, "I like this, don't get me wrong, but I like it better on my wife." Carmina's signature rose had returned yet again, this time having already been through the "dewy" pink peony Eladaria filter, and ensconcing it in oddly sugar-dusted green-grassy accords. Despite the name, there was only the faintest whisper of any actual vetiver at the 6-hour mark of the far drydown. By June, many guys were posting stuff like, "I like and appreciate Wild Vetiver, but it isn't for me." The fragrance that was anticipated to be a new masculine vetiver turned out to be a sweet(ish) feminine rose garden with woody flourishes to appeal to the "unisex" market that Kering was determined to corner. 

I view Wild Vetiver as frustrating on two fronts. The first: it smells like a greener rehash of Eladaria. The Carmina rose was spliced with a bit of Eladaria's pink peony and enlivened with peppery citrus, then made a little dense with "modern amber" in the mid, which to me was rather uncomfortably akin to what a Yankee Candle does when it wants to smell "outdoorsy." For a closer reference, consider the myriad designer offerings of the last ten years that attempt "green" while hewing to some form of nuclear woody amber for girth and longevity. This works fine in a $50 fragrance like Lacoste's reissued Original, which plays the same tune at a much more forgivable price-point, but when you're tacking another zero on the tag, one expects a little more. Wild Vetiver signalled to me that Creed's new approach is to take many very strong and expensive-smelling synthetics and arrange them into perfumes anyone else could make if they could afford to use that many strong and expensive-smelling synthetics. It's no longer about artistry. It's material sophistry. 

The second: Wild Vetiver is a green fragrance, yes, but Creed created one of those in 1999 that outdid all other green fragrances of the past 40 years, and it was called Green Valley. Fans held out hope that Kering would reissue it under a new name, but Wild Vetiver is not that reissue. It's cope on my part, of course. I could lose my delusion, let go of the past, and accept the present. But I'm bitter. Green Valley was a masterpiece. It was better than Green Irish Tweed. Better by miles than Aventus. Even better than Original Vetiver, although in terms of vibe, OV is closest. I can understand not reissuing Green Valley as itself, simply by virtue of not having two fragrances with "green" in the name, but give it a new AI-generated name, L'Oréal, and pretend you created it. I don't care if you strip out 90% of the naturals, remove the ambergris base (already a given), and paste in the new nuclear post-Covid synthetics. Go ahead, do it. I'll still love you for bringing Green Valley back from the dead. The foibles of the past decade would be forgotten. 

But, so far, nobody has done that. Kering's farewell shot was Wild Vetiver, and I had smelled Carmina's rose in a few iterations, so encountering it in Wild Vetiver didn't thrill me. With that said, I recognize something now that Armaf also spotted, probably years ago: it's easier than ever to clone a Creed these days. When you don't have layers of natural tinctures and real ambergris to contend with, the challenge changes completely. At this point, Armaf can utilize the newer multi-tier GC/LC-MS and chemical analysis AI to dissect the exact Creed formula. When a new one is comprised, they can do a bang-up job of buying the same materials for their carbon copy and release it at a tenth of the price. Gone are the days when Creed would source small-farm oils for things like petitgrain, neroli, juniper berry. Now it's just any designer-grade natural oil of modest quality, utterly attainable by the likes of Armaf. And they show up in Club de Nuit Élite's ingredients list, which cites several naturals, including May rose and juniper oils. 

Armaf also included the Carmina rose, virtually identical to the flower in Carmina. Here, one should understand the truth: Kering derived this rose from Armaf. Club de Nuit Intense for women contains that exact rose, and it was released several years before Carmina. Creed added its accents of lavender oil and orange marmalade, which I guess was to disguise this familiar accord and make it Creed's own, and Armaf has since adopted hints of those and tucked them into the May rose found in Élite. I will say that the main difference between Wild Vetiver and Élite, to my nose, is that the rose in the latter does not possess the peony angle of the rose in the former. Élite hews closer to Carmina than to Eladaria. Armaf's fragrance opens with a piquant citrus in the same vein as Wild Vetiver, but perhaps a touch greener and less spicy, which I think is a plus. The lack of heavy-handed pepper tones down the Yankee Candle association. The citrus is soft and fresh, and the first five minutes of Élite are pleasantly green and masculine in feel. Many have commented on there being a green tea note, but I smell a nondescript grassiness with pert juniper and vetiver accents even in the top, and don't really sense any tea. 

The rose accord steps forward fairly quickly, and while it isn't shy, it also isn't as central as in Wild Vetiver, and manages to share the olfactory space with subtle wafts of grassy tones, black currant, a pleasant geranium leaf that gives a little eucalyptus nuance, a bit of piney juniper berry, and Armaf's signature black ambergris reconstruction, which I appreciate for its technical precision beyond just slapping Ambroxan into the mix. The marine quality is only slightly more pronounced in Élite than it is in Wild Vetiver, but Armaf still remained true to the Creed's sugar-dusted woody amber. I say "dusted" because this isn't a dessert-cart amber, nor was it one in the Creed. It's just a bit of a sweetness to complement the woody, patchouli-adjacent intensity of modern amber molecules. I also feel some mineralic nuances, and just as I did with Wild Vetiver, I feel like Élite is expressing the idea of tasting a sweet after a picnic lunch in a field of vetiver and wild roses. Again, vetiver ripples in a breeze behind that very attractive rose.

And here is where Armaf is making the right moves: Élite does something better than the Creed it emulates by employing a true wild rose note, alongside the aforementioned darker rose. If you're familiar with wild roses, Rosa rugosa, you know that they possess a distinctly lemony freshness that undergirds the more typical rosy richness. Their citrusy quality coalesces with the floral sugars into something uniquely green and fresh, and it blends with the leaves and stem of the plant to make sniffing it a profound religious experience. If you want to smell it in all its glory, try Zoologist's Dragonfly Edition 2021, which is a deep meditation on wild roses. I'm familiar with them because my partner's father grows them in his garden in Maine. The flower is also found in Armaf's Club de Nuit Élite, and my goodness, what an upgrade. Why Kering didn't use this same rose in Wild Vetiver is beyond me, because if they had, my opinion of it would've been different. Instead, I find it here in a $60 fragrance, and for once, Armaf has not only outdone Creed in general execution, but outsmarted them in their choice of notes. Those who like Wild Vetiver might like it less after smelling Élite. 

And then there's the last thing, which is that Wild Vetiver doesn't do much with vetiver. Yes, you can sense some vetiver in the base, and it shows up around hour 6, like I said earlier. But in Élite, there are subtle flickers of vetiver all throughout the fragrance evolution. Élite isn't a vetiver bomb either, but it doesn't claim to be a vetiver fragrance anyway, so it doesn't matter. That it uses far more vetiver than its template says something about the level of intelligence employed in the perfume's creation. I'm no lover of vetiver, so I'm perfectly happy to have it play a low-key supporting role, surrounded by other things, and Armaf's fragrance allows it to exist with clarity without completely dominating. Very nice. As "meh" as I was with Wild Vetiver, I find myself liking Club de Nuit Élite quite a bit more. For one thing, it smells like a Kering Creed, and at no point does it smell like a Club de Nuit fragrance from the 2010s. The quality here is amazing. And for another, Élite simply smells better than Wild Vetiver, using the same high-end synthetics to achieve a smarter and dare I say greener fragrance. Two thumbs up for this stuff, and well done, Armaf. 

My Brief Thoughts on Club de Nuit Bling

So Armaf has a new one dropping right now, and the internet is buzzing.

Weirdly, the brand has opted to shroud the fragrance’s pyramid in mystery, listing only a few notes and fantasy accords: “stardust,” “velvet woods,” “flower prism.” Supposedly there’s some citrus and vanilla in the mix as well. The Fragrantica write-up by Sandra Raičević Petrović hints at green notes like geranium and lavender, but her information appears to be secondhand.

My first thought was, maybe this is a Green Valley clone. I have this fantasy that Armaf will finally cut the crap and craft a worthy copy of Creed’s fabled 1999 masterpiece, but the two percent of me that dares to hope is violently oppressed by the ninety-eight percent that knows it’ll never happen. Green Valley is the ultimate modern green scent, and it would be pure genius if Armaf cloned it. Unfortunately, they’ve long abandoned the Y2K, late-nineties throwback vibe in favor of milking the post-Aventus cash cow, endlessly cloning Bourdon’s pineapple formula. I own one of Armaf’s better-known Aventus clones, and while I admire it and wear it now and then, I still think Aventus—and anything that smells like Club de Nuit Intense Man—just isn’t my thing.

What’s annoying about the Bling rollout is how people online are pulling random theories out of thin air. For some reason, a bunch of guys on Fragrantica and Reddit are convinced Bling is a clone of Chanel’s Allure Homme Edition Blanche. “It’s got citrus, vanilla, and woods, so it must be Allure Homme Blanche.” To which I say—what? Why? Where did that even come from? Because it has citrus, vanilla, and “velvet woods,” that automatically narrows it down to an Allure Homme flanker? There are no Armaf clones of Allure Homme or its flankers, for that matter. Honestly, none of this makes sense. If you haven’t smelled the fragrance, nobody’s telling you the real notes, and bottles aren’t even in circulation yet, how do you just declare it a clone of something? Where did that comparison even start?

This is a wait-and-see situation. There are maybe two or three guys online who have smelled it and posted ridiculously brief “first impression” reviews on YouTube, almost as if they’ve signed NDAs. They all suggest it smells like Club de Nuit Intense Man with a big mango accord and a pinch of herbal aromatics layered over the usual smoky pineapple, bergamot, and ashy woods. If that’s true—and that’s a big if—then Club de Nuit Bling isn’t worth the wait. I’m still sitting quietly in the background with my fingers crossed that, against all odds, Bling turns out to be a creamy-green nineties golf fragrance disguised as metrosexual fluff.

Hope springs eternal.

Club de Nuit Untold (Armaf)

Francis Kurkdjian will be remembered as the perfumer who carved his name into the scent world with unmistakable boldness, sometimes too bold. I still recall my first encounter with Le Mâle in 1997. It wasn’t a fragrance; it was a lavender-tonka mushroom cloud, sweet and powdery, detonating across city blocks. It somehow smelled both cheap and expensive, which is Kurkdjian’s signature trick. My best friend wore it exclusively that year. I’ve been in therapy ever since.

Then came Green Tea in 1999, a complete pivot from Gaultier’s chest-thumping style. It was lemony, light, and delicately floral, like a polite ghost asking to be excused. A prelude to the herbal transparency of the 2000s, it became the scent of every frosted-blonde mom on her way to softball drop-off. Green Tea was a shrug in perfume form, but it launched a thousand copycats and eventually became foundational to Kurkdjian’s personal line.

Things stayed quiet until 2015, when he dropped his next bomb: Baccarat Rouge 540. Hard to believe it has been ten years since its launch, eight since the Extrait version arrived. My take? I don’t really have one. I’ve never reviewed it. The first time I smelled it, it was radiating off two Italian-American behavior analysts in Connecticut, glamorous, low-key "It" girls who always seemed perfectly on-trend without trying too hard.

What does BR 540 smell like? A sweet amber. That’s it. Ethyl maltol up front, a faint hit of citrus, then a cloud of safranal and cotton-candy sugars dissolving in the air, trailing into a warmer, still-candied amber. It’s pleasant but ephemeral. You catch it for a second, then it’s gone. Then back again. Then gone again. There’s a resinous green twist in the base, but it’s subtle and transparent, barely holding its own against the persistent sweetness.

Naturally, Armaf joined the clone parade. Their version, Club de Nuit Untold, comes in a flashy iridescent bottle with a reddish base. Easily the best-looking in the line, arguably worth the purchase on looks alone. The scent is nearly a dead ringer for BR 540. Some say it leans toward the Extrait due to its amped-up note concentration, though I haven’t smelled the Extrait to compare. The only real difference is that Untold smells slightly woodier in the drydown.

There is no major quality gap between the two. Performance is strong, though not quite as nuclear as some claim. Even accounting for olfactory fatigue, Untold feels rather restrained. There’s a softness and finesse to it that holds up surprisingly well. The ethyl maltol is there in spades, bringing to mind summer more than fall or winter. But like BR 540, there’s only so much to say. It smells good. It’s sweet. It’s warm, slightly spicy, a bit woody, comfortable, a little sexy, kind of edible, generally safe. It doesn’t blow me away, but it doesn’t bore me either.

As a clone of a Kurkdjian fragrance, it feels like it would shrink in the shadow of the original Le Mâle, as if unworthy by comparison. If I had smelled it in 1996, I might have thought more of it. Today, it’s just a likable modern oriental. You can’t really go wrong wearing it, but it also doesn’t give you much to care about.

I'll end with this: there is barely any quality difference between Untold and BR 540. You can get 105 ml of Untold in its heavy and modern mother-of-pearl bottle for around 35 dollars. BR 540, in a much plainer bottle, costs over 300 for 60 milliliters. Untold is slightly more dynamic, with more prominent jasmine and saffron, along with Ambroxan and Amberwood by Symrise, a kind of postmodern Iso-E-Super with woody accents and a sugar-glazed sheen. Its performance is rumored to beat BR 540’s. So why would anyone still choose the original? In the air, no one can tell them apart. You might as well save your money. Sorry Francis, but your latest masterwork has become a victim of its own success.

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.

Armaf is Breaking People's Brains. I love it.

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. 

Club de Nuit Sillage (Armaf)

I should start with an updated review of Silver Mountain Water by Creed. I'm smelling the current iteration of that scent as I write this, and since it's from Lucky Scent and it comes in a carded Creed 2.5 ml spray sample, I assume it's the most recent batch, or at least one of the most recent. What surprises me about it is that it opens with a very synthetic and sweet accord that smells almost identical to the clones -- almost. The only difference is that it's noticeably smoother. But if I were to smell it in a hurry, I wouldn't really pick that out. I'd just assume it's another SMW clone. That's how unremarkable the top is. The real thing lacks "wow" factor, and that surprises me. I expected more citrus, more naturals. 

Silver Mountain Water rapidly dries into an "inky" blackcurrant note, and it smells dry, quite dark, and rather flat. My girlfriend thought it resembled cinnamon and vanilla, which is interesting. To me it smells like the many clones of SMW that I've owned over the years, only smoother, and not as sweet. It's nice, but that's it. So there you have it. If you want the "smoothest" version of SMW, get SMW. It maintains this subtle inky blackcurrant note for ninety minutes before fading off into a light musk. It's pretty linear, pretty soft, and just pretty. I guess I can chalk it up to BlackRock fucking with the formula, but to be perfectly honest, it smells almost identical to the last pre-BlackRock SMW sample I had, which was also a synthetic berry over musk, and as transient as a fart in the wind. 

This brings me to Armaf's Club de Nuit Sillage. I'll get the bad news out of the way first: It smells a little harsh in the first thirty seconds. But the more I smell it, the more I think that might be on purpose. Again, as I mentioned in the previous article, Armaf was supposedly aiming to clone a much earlier formula of SMW with Sillage, so the weirdly metallic citrus I get off its top accord might be how the Creed used to smell. It quickly segues into a more robust "inky" blackcurrant note, which smells to me like it has more depth, and also an undergirding of bergamot. My girlfriend confirmed it was "sharper" and "more citrusy" but felt she liked the Creed a little more (and confessed she wasn't wild for either of them). Maybe it's because I can smell it better, but I think Armaf, as it smells today, does a nicer job at rendering blackcurrant. A much nicer job. 

There's a hint of tea alongside it, which develops about twenty minutes into wear, and frankly I got zero tea out of the Creed. Literally none at all. The current formula is really basic to my nose, with just a soft blackcurrant that fades into nothing. Armaf smells juicier, richer, and a little greener, and it's silly to pretend that there's any serious attempt at a tea note, but that hint of greenness is probably it. Just like real SMW, Sillage remains pretty linear, with much better longevity and waaay better throw (one or two sprays will catapult eight feet across the room, easily), and the fact that there's no ambergris note isn't a problem, because the current Creed has no ambergris note in it, either. 

Let's be serious about SMW for a second: people, what I'm smelling isn't worth $500. It's synthetic, super-duper weak, and there's no reason to shell out for it. A more natural and realistic version is found in the $30 Armaf. Sorry guys. I said it. Verdict in. But with that said, I think Armaf's clone is the smoothest, the roundest, the deepest, but it's not wildly different from the other clones in my collection. It's definitely the most refined, and I can see how people would argue it's a SMW killer, because let's face it, it is. If you've smelled Silver Shade, Al Wisam Day, and Sun Java White, you're familiar with how ubiquitous this has become. This is the most cloned Creed in existence. Turns out the clones are pretty good. Club de Nuit Sillage just happens to be the best. 

Creed Silver Mountain Water is . . . The Lost Creed?

Oh 4 oz. bottles, how I miss you!

I have two things coming in the mail this week: a full bottle of Armaf's Club de Nuit Sillage, and a 2.5 ml spray sample of Creed's Silver Mountain Water from Lucky Scent. It's pretty obvious why those two things are simultaneously traveling my way. But there's a major problem with making the comparison that might not be obvious to fragrance community newbies, and I'm going to pre-game my review of Sillage by getting into that here. 

Silver Mountain Water was released alongside Millésime Impérial in 1995, and both perfumes were emblematic of the times, smelling fresh, fruity, sweet, green, and musky. You had to be alive and sentient in the nineties to really understand what this means. When I'm in department stores, I see twenty-one year-olds shopping for Le Male or one of its flankers, and I think about how far down the food chain that perfume has sunk. My best friend used to wear it, and he bought it just after it was released in 1995. From 1996 to around high school graduation, I existed (part-time) in a haze of Le Male. The stuff was fresh, sweet, powdery, yes. It was also nuclear. Nuclear. 

I had a professor in high school who wore Chanel Allure Homme upon its release in 1999. This prompted me to buy a bottle that year, and in the years shortly after. Allure Homme is an ambery synthetic wonder, now muted with a crisp woodiness. But in 1999, it preceded my teacher two minutes before he entered the room. You still smelled it ten minutes after he left. Allure Homme wasn't a perfume; it was a presence. And so were many perfumes of that decade, as the styles of the eighties had changed dramatically, but their volume had not changed at all. 

This brings me to Silver Mountain Water. It turns out that it's 2023, and the nineties have been dead for 24 years now. The last time I smelled SMW was in 2011, two years before what I've read were the best batches of that particular Creed, and a year after I smelled it the first time. I've worn it twice, both from carded boutique samples, and both times I found it to be incredibly difficult to smell. My perception of it stopped short at sharp citrus and a vague sweet fruitiness, with a sheer musk tingling just under the surface. There was a difference between the first sample and the second, however. These were parsed under duress, but I could make them out. 

Sample one smelled mineralic, a little stony, a bit green (the tea note), and inky, thanks to a bitter blackcurrant that was sweetened with a dusting of musk. All hard to make out, like trying to glean information from an overexposed photograph, but all there. The second sample was clearly a batch variation, and SMW is really the only Creed where batch variations were dead obvious. It wasn't as stony, wasn't as green, and was basically just a fresh pink-berry fizz atop a white musk. Harder to make out, with even less information for my nose, and it lasted maybe thirty minutes before disappearing completely. 

My experience with SMW is limited to batches dating from 2009 to 2012. This is a problem if I'm going to accurately assess Club de Nuit Sillage as a clone of SMW. Why, you ask? Because the word on the street for the last three years is that Sillage is a clone of vintage nineties SMW. A version of SMW I have never, ever smelled. Also, a version I never will smell, due to its unavailability. There are probably many nineties and early 2000s bottles of SMW floating around in collections out there, and perhaps even a few left on the grey market, but good luck getting your nose on any of them. 

All I can do is imagine that the main difference between the SMW samples I've smelled and nineties SMW is the intensity of its notes, and its overall strength. If my memory of nineties perfumes is anything to go by, deep vintage SMW may have been significantly stronger than what we've all been smelling lately. 

There are some reviewers who say that Armaf cloned 2013 batches of SMW, and that this was the last great year for the fragrance before the corporate buyout of Creed. This may also be true, but it's a little hard to care when every other guy is pointing to a different deep vintage for their comparison. I can't really isolate a particular year when I make my own comparison. All I can do is acknowledge that Armaf has cloned an earlier vintage, probably pre-2010, and I have to take that on faith. Having never smelled the older Creed batches, I can't possibly know how close Sillage comes to any of them. 

But this is precisely why I have a sample of current SMW coming. I remember the older samples. I remember what that particular vintage smelled like, although unfortunately my ability to truly discern all the details of SMW has always been challenged. I'm hoping that I can do three comparisons here, one between the new sample and Sillage, another from memory between the new and older samples, and yet another from memory between Sillage and the older samples. This triangulation is the best I can do when assessing Sillage, and how much SMW has changed in the past decade (pre-to-post buyout). 

When I say "comparisons," I mean comparisons on a few levels. First, I want to know how close they are in quality, i.e., are the materials in Sillage adequate enough to successfully mimic something at Creed's level, despite not having access to Creed's captives? Discerning this requires a fresh sample, and hopefully Creed is still using top-tier chems. Next, I want to know how close they are in composition. Lastly, I'll be curious to see how Sillage performs relative to its template, which has now become notorious for abysmal longevity. Some say Sillage is "beast-mode," and others say it isn't. We'll see. 

In closing, the problem with Silver Mountain Water vs. Sillage reviews is that SMW is no longer SMW, according to many reviewers. They call it "formula drift." It's what happens to older fragrances that have been reformulated numerous times; those lucky enough to do direct comparisons between new and old versions find completely different perfumes that share the same name. Post-buyout SMW is widely reported to be so pathetic in longevity that it isn't worth buying anymore. There are people saying that Sillage smells more like SMW than SMW does. My new sample of SMW will shed light on that for me, and hopefully for you as well. 

It's possible that Sillage will smell like one of the Creed samples I've put my nose on, and maybe by a stroke of luck it'll smell very close to the current sample. But it's a distinct possibility that it will smell nothing like any version of SMW that I've experienced, which doesn't mean it isn't a perfect clone of the original perfume. I'll say that again: It's entirely possible that Club de Nuit Sillage is a perfect clone of a lost Creed, and that Armaf made it because it's been lost. Let that sink in. 

Tres Nuit (Armaf)

If you'd asked me twenty years ago if Tres Nuit by Armaf (which was actually released in 2015, but let's pretend for a minute) smells like Creed's Green Irish Tweed, I would have said it's pretty close, especially in the top notes, but that it's a tad soft, synthetic, and thin in the base, and falls short overall. If you ask me now? Entirely different answer. 

Green Irish Tweed has always been an aberration for the brand. It's the one Creed that smells overwhelmingly synthetic, and it relies on its chemical qualities to make it smell great. The list of chemicals is astounding: Dihydromyrcenol (> 15%), Ambroxide (less than in Cool Water), Galaxolide, Methyl Octine Carbonate, Methyl Heptine Carbonate, and on. In isolation they smell cheap, but together they're heavenly. Pierre Bourdon's original 1985 fougère was a resounding breakthrough in masculine perfumery, and a singular masterpiece for Creed, a loudly fresh but also extraordinarily suave woody-floral for men in an eighties style. But with that said, GIT has changed in the last twenty years. It went from having one of the world's smoothest and richest sandalwood bases, to having no sandalwood base. It went from having a grassy green apple top, to having a muted minty opening that resembles Aspen more than it should. To conceal the lack of precious wood notes in the drydown, Creed amped up the iris (irones) and violet (ionones), which resulted in a rich, purple-floral accord that smells great but linear. It also made the scent vulnerable to the likes of Dubai-based Armaf and its well-tuned gas chromatographs. 

Enter Tres Nuit in 2015, right around the time GIT lost its luster. Whoever put this scent together did two things soundly: They studied several vintages of their template, and spliced together their rendering of two different GITs. They used the diffusively aromatic top accord of pre-2005 GIT, which, when compared side-by-side with Lancaster Cool Water's top accord, is nearly indistinguishable, and they incorporated the simplified sandalwood-free floral drydown found in the post-2011 version of GIT. The result smells so much like Green Irish Tweed (and not Chez Bond) that I no longer need to buy the Creed. Sure, Tres Nuit is a touch sweeter and a mite less "green" than its template, and that extra floral sweetness makes it feel more 21st century and metamodernist, but it's splitting hairs to get too into that. If you want to smell like you're wearing Green Irish Tweed, but don't want to spend the money to do so, wear this. Just understand that you're wearing a splice-up of two different vintages of GIT fused into one scent. If that matters to you. 

Many reviewers claim that Tres Nuit smells more like Cool Water and contains a strong lavender note that isn't in GIT. I think the people saying this are just being basic and "joining the crowd," so to speak. One or two people said Tres Nuit has lavender, so now everyone says it has lavender. I don't really smell a strong lavender note, although there's certainly lavender blended in there, as there is with Cool Water. But there's also a soft lavender in GIT, so I'm not sure why detecting a bit of it in Tres Nuit is supposed to make it wildly different. These are all fougères, people. 

Club de Nuit Intense for Women (Armaf)

Photograph by Muschio Di Quercia

I've reached the point with Arabian perfumery where I'm not sure I should even bother to look into what the fragrances are clones of anymore. There's so much cloning, copying, and stealing going on that I've lost interest in tracing the comparisons and commenting on them. Armaf is notorious for cloning designer fragrances, and Club de Nuit Intense for Women is supposedly a clone of Tom Ford's Noir de Noir, so they went right for the top tier of designer here. It doesn't matter, because CdNI for Women smells pricy, comfortable, and very Arabian, with or without its internet-driven Tom Ford association. 

It opens with a bright rose and hyacinth accord, very floral, but it rapidly darkens from pink, to red, to purple, the petals of a deeply woody and dark rose. Flanking the blossoms are patchouli, cedar, oud, and the patchouli drives the resinous embellishments. This Armaf is initially loud, but it softens in the first hour and wears close thereafter. I'm impressed with the floral element, and I enjoy how it seems to melt into the earthier components of the heart, but what really wins me is how everything gauzes into a discreet vanilla in the base. The notes all harmonize with its radiance, with a rosy sweetness to the end. It's quite civilized for a rose/oud combo, and draws you into its friendly glow. 

CdNI for Women is touted as being a feminine Armaf that men can wear, and I agree. However, it comes in two concentrations, eau de parfum and cologne (as a body spray), and the latter might be more feasible for guys. So if the blast of florals and patchouli feels a little too loud and girly in EDP form, it might be of interest to try the cologne version and see if that wears easier. I find the quality of CdNI for Women to be great for the money, and the sort of Arabian composition that has gone full-circle from Dubai to New York Fashion Week, back to Dubai again. It just feels very modern and Middle Eastern to me. 

Club de Nuit Milestone (Armaf)

Eat your heart out, Laurice.

Youtube reviewers have a bad habit of jumping on bandwagons without actually using their noses, or their brains, for that matter. When Armaf released Club de Nuit Milestone in 2019, everyone was dazzled by the pageantry of its Millésime Impérial-like visual cues: the gold bottle, the folded company card under the box flap (just like Creed!), and the fact that its predecessor, Club de Nuit Intense, is a bestselling clone of Aventus. It walks like a duck, right? It must be one, then. So let's hop on the noisemaker, boys. We have to talk about how Milestone is an amazing clone of Millésime Impérial. La Dee Da. 

Well, guess what, Youtube? I smell a Bond no.9 frag here. Sure the packaging is made to trick buyers into thinking they're in for a Creed clone, but the perfume itself is clearly a Bond. It's like Armaf cloned the top of Wall Street and conjoined it to the base of Chez Bond. Which makes sense, when you consider that Millésime Impérial is just a Green Irish Tweed with salty ozonic melons on top, and that Chez Bond is comparable to GIT, and that Wall Street is comparable to Millésime Impérial. But let's talk about why Armaf's decision to clone Bond frags, but then pretend they've cloned Creed frags, is genius.

Armaf knows it can't afford to convincingly clone a Creed. But they know they can afford to convincingly clone a serial Creed-cloner brand like Bond. See, Bond doesn't use old-world maceration techniques and unicorn tears. Bond uses top-tier synthetics, which are pricy but not that pricy, and then banks on perception. What if Armaf did a GC analysis of Wall Street and Chez Bond, bought all the same chems, and hired a skilled perfumer to Tetris them into something 99% similar to both? The result is an hour of salty-sweet ozonic melons that smell amazing, followed by seven hours of milk-sweetened black tea and violets, which smell even more amazing. 

But Bryan, you cry, there's nothing impressive about cloning a Bond! Exactly. But Bonds smell pretty damn good. Like grey market Bond prices good. About $130 a bottle good, to be exact. What if Armaf can give you the exact same experience for $40 instead? And since Bonds smell so luxurious, why not use that quality to convince buyers you've sold them a brand-killing clone of a Creed instead? Just shellac the bottle in rose gold, call it Milestone instead of Millesime, and let the dummies on Youtube do the rest.

Derby Clubhouse Blanche (Armaf)

Silver Mountain Water clones are weird. Two years ago, I bought Rasasi's Al Wisam Day, expecting it to be a dead ringer based on everything I was reading, and at best it approximates its template by maybe 60% (or less). So I had to stow expectations for Armaf's Derby Clubhouse Blanche, given its cheaper price point, and less than stellar reputation. I have never received a compliment on AW Day, and figured DCB would also be underwhelming.

Armaf's interpretation is fresher, lighter, and subtler than Rasasi's, and these differences are immediately obvious at first spray. It's also a much simpler composition. Al-Wisam Day is full of sparkling herbal notes, supported in the base by tea rose and synthetic sandalwood. Armaf eschews complexity and employs a quartet pyrmaid: fleeting citrus, green tea, sweet berry, and aqueous musk (presumably a stand-in for ambergris). Though somewhat basic, I think the nose for DCB calibrated its limited palette wisely, choosing a dusky green tea aroma chemical that darkens as it evaporates, respectably mimicking the "ink" in the Creed. The scent's musk was also a good choice, as it radiates an odd, somewhat watery freshness later in the dry down.

I'm not sure what the point of the citrus is, as it lasts twenty seconds off the top, and the "berry" note, which is meant to be blackcurrant, just smells vague and sweet (this is probably one of Creed's captive molecules, which no clone can imitate), but everything feels decently balanced, performance is reasonable, and I think I got a bit more than I paid for here. It's good to note that these kinds of scents are very high-pitched, making olfactory fatigue common, so longevity can be difficult to gauge.

Rasasi's fragrance is more complex, far richer, and probably a better scent all around, but I did receive two compliments from a woman who said she wanted to wear the Armaf herself, and after a week of unbroken wear, I've yet to tire of it. If you're on the fence here, all I can say is, try it. Given its $20 price tag, you can't go wrong. I'm looking forward to smelling how Franck Olivier's Sun Java White compares.