Creed Perfumes & Colognes

Fourteen bottles, every one of them Eau de Parfum. Creed is the most expensive house we carry, and the one people most often ask us to justify. This page tries to.

A tailor in London, then a perfumer in Paris

The house dates its founding to 1760 in London, where James Henry Creed made clothing rather than fragrance — scented gloves and leathers were a tailor’s sideline at the time. It moved to Paris in 1854 and gradually became a perfumer proper. Some of the older claims in that story are disputed by historians, and we would rather say so than repeat them as fact. What is not disputed is that the business has stayed in the same family for six generations, and that it still blends by hand in small batches rather than at industrial scale.

That last part matters more than the founding date. Batch-to-batch variation is real with Creed, particularly with Aventus, and it is a consequence of how they make it rather than a fault.

Aventus, and its two relatives

Aventus arrived in 2010 and did something no niche fragrance had managed before — it crossed over. It is the reason most people know the name, and the most cloned fragrance of the last fifteen years. We stock three versions, which confuses almost everyone:

• Aventus — the original. Smoky pineapple over birch. The one meant when someone just says “Aventus”.
• Aventus Cologne — lighter and fresher, not weaker. A different reading of the same idea, better suited to heat.
• Absolu Aventus — the most concentrated, and the most expensive bottle on this page.

The rest of the shelf deserves more attention

Aventus takes the attention, but it is the newest thing here and not the reason the house has a reputation. Green Irish Tweed dates from 1985 and is the template a great many fresh masculine fragrances have followed since. Silver Mountain Water and Virgin Island Water are the summer end, and the latter is the least expensive way into the house. Bois du Portugal and Original Santal are the warm, woody, older-feeling side. Millesime Imperial sits somewhere between salt and citrus and has no obvious imitator.

If you want a route through them, our guide to the best Creed fragrances goes bottle by bottle.

On the price

Nothing here is inexpensive, and it is fair to ask what that buys. Partly the ingredients and the small-batch method; partly the name. What it does not buy is a guarantee that you will prefer it — Armaf and Lattafa both build openly on this territory for a fraction of the price, and plenty of people are happy there. If it is the luxury bracket you are shopping in rather than this house specifically, Bond No. 9 is the other one we stock in depth. Everything Creed makes is listed under men’s cologne as well.