(12-08-2016, 02:03 AM)nervosa1901@ Wrote: After viewing this thread off and on for several weeks, I feel the need to address an issue that concerns me. I am hoping Will can provide thoughtful replies on these matters, and that members will refrain from labeling me as a "troll" or troublemaker. If my post results in comments from others that are unwarranted, I am not to blame.
My issue concerns Will's expertise in the area of fragrance. I have been collecting scents for some time, primarily Creed. Some of the comments coming from Will regarding this perfume house are utterly ridiculous. Will has stated that Creed has notoriously poor quality control issues. I am curious to learn how many bottles of Creed Will has owned over the years that would put him in a position to make such an accusation.
In addition, Will stated recently that many perfume houses, Creed included, do not use real oud when constructing their fragrances. On what authority can you speak to this issue? Erwin Creed and the managers at the Creed Boutique in New York City have stated repeatedly that real Indian oud is used in the production of the Royal Oud fragrance. The website also states the same.
You are regarded by many who patronize your brand as a fragrance guru. They seem to rely on your advice. I feel, however, that you are quite simply spreading a great deal of misinformation and making unfounded accusations, which have a negative effect on the decisions your followers make when it comes to purchases. I think this is a great shame.
You went to law school (just down the street from where I went, as a matter of fact), and then you went in to the soap making business. From what I can tell, you had no formal training in scent. You appear to simply parrot some of the same unfounded accusations made on Basenotes to your audience, which is a disservice to the community. I welcome your thoughts on my concerns.
It's a fair question. What makes me qualified?
Nothing but a lot of experience and a lot of work.
Collecting fragrances is one thing. Collectors often consider themselves to be the be-all, end-all of fragrance knowledge. "I collect such and such and so I know more than you do." And that's fine. I applaud your brand loyalty. Creed was once a great and gifted house, and many of their older works deserve the "masterpiece" labels that are so generously applied these days.
I do not collect, except for sample vials. I formulate. I dismantle. I reverse-engineer. In order to further my education and to satisfy my (what some would call "obsessive") curiosity, I have been analyzing fragrances on a wholesale basis for some time, using some of the revenue of Barrister and Mann to fund my research. I've seen the GC/MS analyses. Pulled these fragrances (and others) apart piece by piece.
No, there is no real oud in Creed
Royal Oud. I suspected as much upon first seeing it, since the juice is either crystal clear or only faintly yellowish, depending on its vintage. Real oud is so dense, so immensely strong, that it darkens just about anything in which you would dilute it. Since the perfume is nearly colorless, I had rather wondered if it contained the real thing for quite some time. About a year ago, I decided to purchase an ounce (the necessary quantity for gas chromatography) and sent it for analysis at a lab with whom I work from time to time. When the spec report came back, it contained none of the molecules that you would find in real oud, namely the "noise" that's found in most natural materials. What it DID contain was the exact profile of Firmenich's famous Oud Synthetic 10760E base, an extremely highly regarded synthetic oud that's present in many mass-market fragrances today. The likelihood of that profile overlapping with real oud is basically zero, nor does
Royal Oud SMELL like a true oud perfume; it's too harsh, too screechy, an effect produced by the incorporation of the synthetic compound Timberol (aka Norlimbanol), which is often used in conjunction with synthetic oud bases.
So that's where I get that "accusation." I have no problem with synthetic oud. It's not my preference, but I believe that it can and should be used in perfumes today. But I must say that I object to the idea of using a synthetic in a perfume, telling people that it's real (which, as I've already mentioned, is nonsense), and then charging them accordingly. It would seem, at least to me, that it's better to capitalize on the idea of environmental responsibility, since oud is already terribly overharvested, and put in the time to produce a genuinely beautiful synthetic without destroying any of the actual trees necessary.
I'm sure that your next point will be, "Well, where did I develop the qualifications to read a GC/MS analysis?" Two parts to that: 1) I do have a solid background in biology and chemistry, which I studied as an undergrad, and; 2) I taught myself. I made a point of learning to read such analyses properly in order to make sure that I knew what I was looking at and not simply feeding people a line of bull.
Finally, on to the quality control. I own no modern Creeds, though I WAS fortunate enough to obtain a flacon of their
Cuir de Russie from its last bottling in 2011. Truly a brilliant work, and one of a type that I wish Olivier and Erwin would study more closely. However, I HAVE made a point of smelling many, many bottles, decants, and vials of various current production Creed perfumes, and have found significant variation in the odor qualities of most of them, particularly
Aventus,
Bois de Portugal, and
Original Vetiver (whose predecessor, the elegantly constructed
Vetiver 1948, holds the spot as my favorite vetiver perfume of all time; tragic indeed that it was cast aside). I'm sensitive enough to the dihydromyrcenol and ethylene brassylate in
Green Irish Tweed that I am incapable of smelling past them for several hours, so I generally rule GIT out because I cannot tell whether there's much variation or not. But there are definitely significant variations in ingredient quality in the perfumes I've mentioned, all of which I have experienced for myself. There's a reason that I lament Creed's current status; to me, it is a once-great-but-fallen house, possessed of rich history, tradition, and talent, but that seems to have lost its way in the pursuit of commercial success. I have nothing personal against the house or the Creed family, only a wish that they would not have discarded their traditions so carelessly.
Reddit's /r/wet_shavers served as the sole host at the time, and, with the collapse of the sub, the content was lost except for my personal archives. If I do a blog again, I will be hosting it myself. I will not risk another bout of watching all of my work go to waste because some dimwit with a God complex decides that he doesn't like where "his" community is going.
