Saturday, April 13, 2013

Is this Creed a Fake? An essay in applied epistemology





A while back, I purchased a couple of Creed perfumes from an online discount emporium. I knew that they had a liberal return policy, so in the event that I received fakes, I'd be able to return them for a full refund. I had bought Creeds from discounters in the past with extraordinarily good luck. I base this claim on the fact that I tested nearly the entire set of Creed perfumes about three years ago using house-prepared vials provided by an officially authorized Creed dealer. I wrote reviews at that time, and so when my experience matched my reviews, and the perfumes also proved to have excellent longevity and smell natural, I was confident that they were authentic. Needless to say, I was delighted in those cases to have saved a wad of cash by taking a chance on acquiring those bottles from unauthorized dealers.



 Note the peridot green color!


This more recent time, however, I may not have been so lucky. I spoke with a woman at Creed headquarters at length regarding the purchase, as I had also in the past about various issues regarding their distribution and the problem of fakes. Creed is extremely helpful and understanding about this problem and they go out of their way to take the time to talk to consumers of their perfumeswhether or not they are customers of the boutique itself. 

The people at Creed know very well that many of us who wish to own Creed perfumes would also love to be able to save $100 or even $200 a bottle, if possible. But is it possible in a world rife with Creed fakes? that is the question, my fragrant friends. Of course, many consumers believe that genuine Creeds can be had for significantly less than MSRP, as evidenced by the amazing fact that, despite countless "Creed fake" threads at Dnotes, all of which relay basically the same story over and over again, people continue to acquire Creed bottles from e-bay. 

As a matter of fact, even the Creed staff avers that it is possible to obtain genuine Creed perfumes from unauthorized dealers. The problem, they are swift to warn, is that there is no guarantee, as there is when one purchases from an officially authorized Creed dealer. One way for real Creed perfumes to show up at discounters is when an authorized dealer closes up shop for one reason or another (usually going out of business), and they sell off their entire stock in one big lot. 


The structure of the cap and spray mechanism appear to be genuine


The problem, of course, is that discounters obtain bottles by any and all other means as well, and this means that it's always a gamble. Discounters, too, hope to peddle only genuine wares, but because there is not a direct and documentable path from the provider back to the producer of the perfumes, there is no way to prevent fakes being slipped into the system now and then. For most perfumes, this is not a problem, since no one would bother to invest the time and energy needed to produce a plausible fake because it would not be profitable enough. Only for expensive perfumes such as Creed does this make the enterprise worth the criminal's effort and guile. 


The lot numbers engraved on the bottle and printed on the box match

The good news is that, unlike ebay peddlers, discounters tend not to be fly-by-night ventures but reputable businesses working hard to build and maintain a loyal clientele. This is why when customers are dissatisfied, the store permits them to return the merchandise, and the store even pays the postage for the return, provided that there is a legitimate reason for the disgruntled consumers' concern.

I believe that I may have received a fake bottle of Tabarome, which for that reason I returned (once a good friend of mine had taken these photos for me). What is the evidence? skeptical minds are already asking. What are the key signs of a fake Creed? Having looked into this matter a few times before, I am familiar with the tell-tale signs of egregious fakes, and many of them are missing in this case. Here is what is as it should be:

1. There are no misspellings of the text on either the box or the folio. 

2. The cardboard of the box has the raised impressions with the Creed logo. 

3. The lot number etched in the bottom edge of the glass matches the lot number on the label affixed to the bottom of the box. 

4. The inner sprayer is made of white plastic and is a separate piece from the outer sprayer. 

5. The cap has a separate inner plastic insert, and the crown insignia is on a separate piece from the rest of the outer cap.

6. The white calling card included in the box appears to be genuine, as it is empirically indistinguishable from the ones included with bottles which I am confident contain authentic Creed perfume.



Folio and Calling Card included in the box


So far, so good. Unfortunately, there are a few outstanding problems. If this bottle is a fake, it is not an egregious one, but is it a fake after all?

Let us list the evidence, and then consider the various explanations for the evidence. Are there other ways to explain what I identified as disparities? I found problems with each of these:


1. The scent 

2. The color of the liquid

3. The box top

4. The folio

5. The front of the box

6. The marbled quality of the plastic inner layer of the cap.



The Scent


The moment I sprayed on the liquid from this bottle, the first word which came out of my mouth was: aromachemicals. The scent smacked decidedly of the current craze among both designer and niche perfumers for the use of some combination of iso-E-super and ambroxan and what-not, and I do not like it at all. Would I want to wear this perfume? In a word: No.

Why in the world did she buy it? inquiring minds are now pondering. The answer is found in the review which I penned at Fragrantica on May 7, 2010:

I am beginning to wonder whether I might have been a chain smoker in a past life, as I find myself delighted by every fragrance in which tobacco plays a central role, and especially in savory presentations. Part of my excitement may be due to the relative dearth of the tobacco note in women's perfume, and especially outside gourmand territory. 
Creed TABAROME is a delectable tobacco composition with no sweetness, no ashiness, and no dirtiness. This is not the smell of cigarettes, cigars, or pipes. TABAROME is clean, wet, green, freshly harvested piles of tobacco leaves, beautifully framed by a few gentle aromatics. Fresh tea leaves are present as well, along with sandalwood, vetiver and musk, serving to anchor the composition and impart good longevity and medium sillage. 
I do not believe that TABAROME is suited only for men, nor that this is an "old school", "landed gentry" frag. I find this sumptuous in the way in which so many patchouli perfumes are--the clean ones, not the dark, dirty ones.  
Perhaps tobacco land owners should abandon their doomed projects to create new smokers and instead divert their energies, resources and time to the perfume industry. I honestly believe that now that patchouli has achieved market saturation, tobacco could be the new patchouli...
Highly recommended. On my wish list, too!

So there you have it. Why I boughtor tried to buya bottle of Tabarome. My experience of the liquid in the bottle in question unfortunately bore no relation to the experience relayed in the above review. 

Now, there are several possible explanations for the disparity. Perhaps in my first encounter with Creed Tabarome I was succumbing to the power of suggestion. Perhaps I imagined the scent of tobacco in my original testing of a house-sourced vial. But why, then, would I not similarly conjure up the scent of tobacco in this instance as well? I suppose that it is possible that I was already skeptical, having purchased the bottle from a discounter. 

What if this creation has been reformulated? Perhaps I smelled another scent because the name Tabarome is now being attached to a different perfume. Or perhaps the disparity can be explained by the natural variations in natural ingredients, often cited in explaining inconsistencies especially in different batches of perfumes built from natural materials. 

The problem with that explanation is that the substance in this bottle of Tabarome did not smell natural to me at all. I smelled none of the wonderful notes of what I believed earlier to have been Tabarome. I smelled aromachemicals. Is it possible that in the interim I developed a hypersensitivity to aromachemicals having encountered them in some many perfumes of late? Perhaps I did not smell the ginger and the tobacco and the other notes in this batch of Tabarome because my nose was distracted by the aromachemicals which perhaps were being used now in place of some of the former materials.

Could the disparity be explained by a change in taste? I do not believe so, because I detected none of the notes present in the earlier testing. Before, I was able easily to identify the tobacco note. It's not that I detected tobacco in this batch and did not like it. No, I did not detect it at all!



The Color

Am I imagining this, or is this the only bottle of Tabarome pictured on the entire World Wide Web which is peridot green? I've googled and googled, and looked at everyone's images, and the liquid in only this bottle is a wacky hue of green! What can this mean? Could this radical difference in color be explained by a particularly verdant crop of tobacco? Needless to say, I'm skeptical, given that I smelled no tobacco but only aromachemicals here.





The Box top

Every single box of Creed which I own and have ever seen uses all caps for the text on the box top. This one uses lower case. Was this due to a deviant designer who happened to be working at the time of the production of the box housing this particular bottle of "Tabarome"? Are there other boxes around with lower-case text, and I simply have never encountered them? If I owned more Creed perfumes, would I encounter this variant again? Can anyone out there speak to this question? Have you a box with lower-case writing on the top? If so, are you sure that yours is authentic Creed? How is it that you know?

Only one of these boxes (in the lower left-hand quadrant)
uses lower case for the list of historical figures who wore Creed perfume.
The other boxes all use all caps 



The Folio

The informational folio included with all of my other Creed perfumes has four pages, in multiple languages. This one? A single page in English, with no text on the backside and no other languages. 

Page 1 of two different folios: the one on the left is only in English;
the one on the right offers the text in English, French, Italian, and German 
on the subsequent pages (missing from the dubious Tabarome folio)

Page 2 of the dubious Tabarome folio; Page 2-3 of an authentic Creed folio


There is no text on the backside (page 2) of the dubious Tabarome folio;
there is text on the backside (page 4) of the authentic Creed folio

I do not believe that the severely abridged folio alone proves that the Tabarome is fake. But it requires some imagination to explain why the text is only the first page of the four-page authentic folio. Could it be a printer error? Books are sometimes printed with pages in the wrong order or missing pages, or even with the pages of a completely different book interpolated. Could something bizarre like that have happened here? Is it plausible that a fake-Creed producer would make this sort of mistake, when it seems one of the easiest parts of the production to mimic?


The Front of the Box


The issues which I found on the front of the box are subtle, but perhaps important. First, the word père appears to be split in two, as though the person setting the text did not know French and so thought that there were two words: and re.



père  or  and re ???


The second issue is the missing next to 120ml. This is present on all of my other boxes. However, there is a possible problem. This Tabarome was the only 120ml bottle box ever in my possession. Could it be that the 120ml bottle box does not have that symbol for a reason? I am skeptical, especially because my 250ml bottle of Jasmin Impératrice Eugénie (which is undeniably authentic) does display that symbol next to the volume. 

a suspiciously missing e

Again, the possibilities proliferate. Could this, too, have been a printer's error on a specific lot of boxes? The raised insignia looks perfectly in order. The cardboard is clearly the same. Even the silver ink matches. Could these variations be the work of an incompetent typesetter, perhaps?



The Inner Cap


The inner cap is a separate piece from the outer cap, which seems genuine because the crown insignia is also separate. However, there is a problem:  the inner cap exhibits a marbled quality absent from every other Creed cap I've seen. 

Is this marbled quality common in Creed caps?
Have I just happened on homogeneous plastic in my experience with genuine Creeds in the past? 

This, too, could be some sort of fluke. Or perhaps I simply have not looked at a wide enough range of Creed caps. Or perhaps, again, there are significant differences in the case of 120ml bottles. But wait: aren't the caps the very same size???? Needless to say, I am confused.

Is this a fake? Who knows? Does it even matter? I only knew in this case what I needed to know: that I did not like this perfume and would not use 120 mls of it in even 120 years.




Implications


Perhaps all of the deviations can be explained somehow. Perhaps the dubious Tabarome was a real Creed perfume. But it is also quite possible that the perfume in the bottle was not  genuine Creed perfume. I've read many, many dismissive reviews of Tabarome. Does this mean that the perfume itself is bad? Or that fakes such as mine are rife? I suspect that the latter is the best explanation of the poor (sometimes scathing) reviews, given that there is a handful of glowing reviews brim with praise. My suspicion is that the bottle I returned is now in the hands of some other perfumista who purchased it in the hope of receiving a genuine Creed for a fraction of MSRP. It is even possible that a decanter acquired this or another bottle like it, and by divvying it up into tiny (grossly overpriced) samples, has sown falsehood and deception far and wide.

Now I'd like to open up the floor. Come forth Creed fans and foes! Share your Creed fake stories. If you are a Creed detractor, ask yourself whether you can trace the source of your juice back to the Creed boutique or headquarters. If not, I need to know whether you believe that there is some reason why you, too, might not have been testing a bogus dupe when you took Creed to task for producing a "boring, synthetic, derivative, and overpriced excuse for a niche perfume." 

It's time to come clean, my friends. Please share your epistemological trials and tribulations. Or explain why you should be free from the above sorts of concerns.

96 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Thank you, Carlos, and welcome to the salon de parfum! It's very nice to see you here!

      Have you any Creed stories to share? ;-)

      Delete
  2. I know relatively nothing about Creed, however I agree that your Tabarome does look fishy. Especially with such bright green liquid.

    I hope for your sake that you're given a full refund if it does indeed turn out to be a fake.

    In all my online buying, the only suspected fake I bought was an odd bottle of Fresh Essence by David Yurman. Luckily a full refund was given, and I was allowed to keep the fake so I could compare it later to actual manufacturer samples of Fresh Essence.

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    1. Hello, Kat, and thank you for your contributions to this discussion!

      Yes, the color to me was a big red flag--well, green! The liquid is actually the same color as Britney Spears Believe! ;-)

      That's interesting that you may have received a fake David Yurman. Isn't that a relatively new perfume? I've seen those bottles at discounters for very little money, but I tested that series (from manufacturer carded samples) and did not like it very much, so I won't be gambling on the inexpensive bottles.

      In the case of the Creed Tabarome shown above, the emporium enthusiastically provided an RMA (return merchandise authorization) and paid for the return postage, so my impression is that they want to keep their customers happy and prevent any rumors circulating to the effect that they peddle fakes.

      I suspect that the vast majority of people who buy Creed from discounters have no prior experience with the house and so simply accept whatever they receive--for better or for worse. This makes it cost effective for the discounters to comply and be as accommodating as possible when an occasional errant skeptic arises...

      Thank you for sharing your experience, Kat!

      Delete
    2. David Yurman's jewellery is often faked, so I suppose they thought it worth their time to fake his fragrances as well. My bottle of Fresh Essence was a much greener liquid than yours, and I half suspect it was filled with mouth wash. It had a Fresh Exotic sticker on the bottom, and the glass had been broken and welded back together again. Thankfully I too got my money back, including postage costs. I had been lucky up until that point. I compared the sample, which was a much paler green mind you, and knew immediately that I had been jibbed. It's an awful feeling.

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    3. Yes, Kat, I agree that it is an awful feeling. Straight to the boutique for me from now on. I have lost all faith in discounters when it comes to Creed.

      I think that the worst part of the whole fakery business is that we have NO IDEA which liquids were used. This makes it potentially quite dangerous even to spritz the stuff on! I read a disturbing article a while back (I'll try to find the link...) which indicated that the shysters sometimes really do throw in antifreeze and the like--whatever will produce a plausible color--with no attention to questions of toxicity. There are shysters in every realm of commerce, but it seems much worse morally speaking when product being faked is going to be ingested by someone!

      Delete
  3. People will give me grief for buying Creed ONLY from their approved retail outlets (or since I'm in NY, I've made good friends with Creed Boutique). This is precisely the reason. There are more than enough indications on the box exterior since the printing doesn't include the authentic wording (should reference London then Paris with the varied dates, usually in 3 lines).

    The juice is never lizard spit green, it's a yellow and has a much different aroma than you've described. You have a fake. A good looking one, but clearly a fake nonetheless. Ultimately, you can try the discounter route, but even with some supposedly reputable retailers of other products, you can still find knock-offs of products that make their way in.

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    1. Hello, Andrew!

      Yes, I think that I may have finally come around. Is all of this grief worth the money saved, if I may be spraying anti-freeze on my body? I'm going straight to authorized dealers from now on. In fact, why bother with anything but the boutique, given their excellent customer service? It's time for me to develop not only a conversational but also a direct consumer relationship with the friendly folks at Creed!

      The green to me was key--and especially when I googled, which to my shock brought up not a single peridot green bottle, out of thousands of images!!!!

      By the way, my 250 ml bottles of Jasmin Impériale Eugénie and Love in White (procured from authorized dealers) have the London reference, but my authentic 75ml bottles of Love in Black, Fleurs de Bulgarie, Vanisia, Irisia, Jasmal, and Fleurissimo, all lack the London reference. It may be present only on the larger bottles? Not sure. This was my first experience with a 120ml bottle...

      Thanks for stopping by and contributing to this discussion, which is becoming more and more intriguing--see Bryan Ross' post, below!

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  4. I hate to tell you this Sher (please message me with Creed!) but that bottle is 100% genuine. Absolutely no doubt about it. Creed does use lowercase on some box tops and all caps on others. Older boxes have the "e" symbol next to the ml, while newer ones do not. And Tabarome has been known to be a bright green color in the past, again with older batches. The cap checks out, as does the literature on the inside, which comes in abridged and unabridged versions, depending on which country the bottle is marketed in. What you had there is an older bottle of Tabarome, possibly too old if the fragrance itself smelled synthetic and off-balance. That happened to a genuine but overly-aged bottle of Green Valley I had a while back. Creed's packaging is intentionally confusing to confuse counterfeiters. If you notice, they employ a rather U.S. dollar bill method of packaging, with so many details to pay attention to. It's enough to drive buyers and counterfeiters crazy! But yeah, that bottle is real.

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    1. Hello, Bryan, and thank you not only for this comment, but also the link which you sent me in email to your excellent post at Badger and Blade displaying an authentic (boutique-bought) 120ml bottle of Creed Green Irish Tweed.

      Your pictures confirm what you have said in the comment above, that all of the deviations on the box are not signs of fakery. Here is the link for everyone else:

      http://badgerandblade.com/vb/showthread.php/203264-A-Comprehensive-Visual-Rundown-of-What-a-REAL-Green-Irish-Tweed-Looks-Like


      I had definitively concluded that my Tabarome was a fake. Now, having viewed your images, I must say that I am totally confused!!!!

      Thank you for contributing to this debate, Bryan!

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    2. Out of curiosity, did you check the etching of the Lot # on the bottle? I'm seeing the Lot # on the tag, so does the bottle etching match? I would also be curious on what Creed might have to say about the age of that lot (when produced).

      And I see Anonymous is back off his medications again, eh? ;)

      Delete
    3. Yes, Andrew, the lot number engraved on the bottom edge of the bottle matched the printed lot number on the label. Maybe I should ask Creed about the lot number. That's a very good idea, and it would be a way to determine whether Bryan is right that the juice is just plain old.

      Having already written the bottle off as a fake, I did not think to run the lot # by them. I'll call Creed headquarters tomorrow. Thanks for this suggestion!

      Delete
    4. Sorry, I re-read and it did mention that.

      I did find something out on Basenotes -- it appears to be pretty spot on to my other Creeds, and I compared it against my own boxes -- so it does decode something of the batch information.

      http://www.basenotes.net/threads/270780-Creed-lot-numbers-SOLVED!

      That said, using their system, the 38 (Tabarome) and 10 (2010) suggest the bottle is a 2010 edition. The explanation makes sense since I have a 2006 bottle I purchased from Needless Markup in early 2007, and my numbers are 6/7 characters (which connects to the suggestions in the posting). Long way around suggesting that someone's given you some really bad juice in the bottle, and it may be fake. Given the age of my bottle and maintained under decent conditions, it hasn't degraded to a point where it turned Leprechaun Green (my juice remains light yellow).

      I also noticed that Lot # does Google and a lot of the traffic redirects to an eBay seller.

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    5. Fascinating! Thank you for embarking on this fact-finding mission! The lot # traffic going to an ebay seller naturally raises my suspicions since I never use ebay ... for a reason... Wow. Thanks again!

      Delete
  5. The pantry boy Bryan said:

    *****Bryan Ross April 13, 2013 at 10:36 PM
    I hate to tell you this Sher (please message me with Creed!) but that bottle is 100% genuine. Absolutely no doubt about it. Creed does use lowercase on some box tops and all caps on others. Older boxes have the "e" symbol next to the ml, while newer ones do not....What you had there is an older bottle of Tabarome, possibly too old***
    *


    So how on Earth did this Einstein figure out "older boxes have the 'e'", Yet this box without the 'e' he says, "what you have there is an older box"?

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    1. Anonymous, although your message is rude, it is relevant, so I have posted it.

      You are right: a puzzle does indeed remain.

      I would greatly appreciate if you could make an effort to tone down the needless nastiness in future relevant remarks. It adds nothing to the content of your otherwise cogent criticism.

      Thank you for your consideration.

      sherapop

      Delete
  6. One of your idiot friends insists the Creed is fake, the other idiot friend insists it's real. So is either imbecile correct?

    I love this!!!!!

    Precisely why you are all full of yourselves and actually know NOTHING!!!!!!!! :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Again, we get the point; we see the contradiction.

      Why diminish the effectiveness of your critique by peppering it with irrelevant insults?

      Delete
  7. @Bryan Ross: You say that the juice is green and smells synthetic and off-balance because the bottle is old. But you also say that only the new boxes have no "e" printed on them. How does that fit together?

    Creed fragrances are so confusing. Even if you have a genuine bottle, you may have a bad batch :-( I will stay away from this house.

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    1. Hello, Manuel K., and welcome to the salon de parfum!

      Thank you so much for illuminating the quandary before us. I remain stumped by this case!!!!

      Another possibility which I came up with is that the bottle is genuine but filled with fake juice. That seems at least possible, since Creed fakers appear to take a single authentic bottle and dilute it and then redistribute it over a bunch of bottles. If they can somehow procure empty Creed bottles, then they could fill them with bogus juice...

      The possibilities continue to proliferate!

      Thank you for contributing to this discussion, Manuel K.!

      Delete
  8. Bryan, how old would the batch need to have been for it to be green? For as many years as I've had Tabarome Millesime (not Vintage Tabarome), I've only seen the light yellow color, so the green made me suspect.

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    1. Just Google it, and you'll see: no green. That just seems weird to me. Why would there not be a single green image anywhere on the World Wide Web??????

      I remain mystified!!!!

      Delete
  9. Let me clarify: In examining the combination of elements on the box, comparing it to two Creed boxes from the Creed Boutique in my collection, it appears that I misspoke. Sher's bottle appears to be an older bottle in a newer box. The new boxes lack the "e" symbol and have lowercase font on the top flap. So watch this, and hold onto your butts: it appears they sent Sherapop an old bottle in a *gasp!* new box! Completely insane and impossible to comprehend, I know.
    @Andrew: Probably five or six years, and stored poorly. I have seen authorized Tabaromes with a very slight greenish tint, and there are a few Youtubers who have commented on their Tabarome being a deeper green. I'm not one to believe in "batch variations" as they are usually overblown, but in the cases of Silver Mountain Water, EROLFA, and regarding some colorings of Tabarome, there seems to be some merit to it.
    I don't have all the answers about Creed bottles but based on a box comparison between my Creed Boutique purchase of Green Valley and my newer Creed Boutique purchase of Green Irish Tweed, everything about Sher's bottle and box check out as authentic. The color of the juice is the only unusual element, and the fact that Tabarome is given to acquiring greenish hues, I don't see that alone as grounds enough to call it a fake.
    You can agree with me if you wish, but I suggest you check out the link Sher posted above, at least as it concerns the box. Pictures do not lie.

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    1. Thanks Bryan, for all of these clarifications.

      What do you think about the possibility I suggested in my reply to Manuel K., that perhaps the bottle and box are authentic, but the juice is fake?

      Clearly the people in the Creed fake industry buy some genuine Creed bottles, right? So they must have some authentic bottles and boxes. Some percentage of the fakes which they fob off are going to be, therefore, in house-produced packaging. No?

      I remain confused! Thank you so much for helping us to sort all of this out!

      Delete
    2. p.s. my grounds for alleging that it was a fake were not only the color, but also the scent...

      My reception from the house-carded sample to the discounter-procured bottle was a 180 degree turn-around from love to disgust!

      Delete
    3. Sher, it's always possible someone tampered with the bottle and put fake juice in there. However, as far as Tabarome goes, I don't see why anyone would bother. The most counterfeited Creeds are GIT, MI, SMW, and Aventus (and I don't think counterfeiters have caught up to Aventus yet enough to pollute the market). Things like Neroli Sauvage, EROLFA, and Tabarome Millesime are the least likely of the Creeds to be faked, they're "bottom tier" Millesimes that aren't huge sellers. I see little advantage to going to the trouble to fake Tabarome Millesime, unlike faking GIT or MI.

      Delete
    4. Thanks Bryan, that makes sense--except for the lingering mystery of the old bottle in the new box. Can you conjure up some sort of plausible scenario in which that might happen? I cannot really come up with one myself.

      Here's the problem I see: if the box and the bottle are authentic, then let's say that the box of the old bottle was destroyed. But that means taking the box of a new bottle and leaving that bottle without a box. So would that bottle then be sold NIB? But why not this one, instead?

      Sorry if I'm being obtuse, but it just does not make sense to me. ;-/

      Delete
    5. The plausible explanation is that the seller had more bottles than boxes, due to selling some "tester" bottles of Tabarome that they wanted to send in genuine commercial Creed packaging instead of the boring cardboard tester boxes that Creed's testers usually come in.

      Delete
    6. Ah ha! Tester bottles... yes, now THAT makes sense! Thank you, Bryan!

      Delete
    7. No, it doesn't make sense, numbers on tester bottles would not match with this silly tester bottle/real box theory. There is no anecdotal evidence anywhere on the WWW or a fragrance forum that someone experienced a purchase like that. And there are too many photos of boxes and bottles online of Tabarome that match exactly what the pop has.

      Delete
    8. It's possible, I think, but only if tester boxes bear peel-off labels which can be moved to another box. That is the question. Of course, possibility does not establish reality...

      Delete
    9. Anonymous does make sense, sorry pal - some Millesime bottles, particularly Millesimes made before 2007, DO NOT EVEN HAVE LOT NUMBERS ENGRAVED ON THEM. You can't begin to get into lot numbers and try to theorize some truth regarding authenticity on them alone. Not to mention, Creed boxes do not always have lot number indications on them. The idea that they had more bottles than boxes is perfectly plausible. "There is no anecdotal evidence that someone experience a purchase like that" - Sherapop's blog post is the anecdotal evidence of it. Do people generally care about the authenticity to the degree that she did? From what I've seen, no, she really exhaustively examined this thing and didn't just stop at "the color's not right." Most people see one or two things and raise an eyebrow, ask for a refund, etc. The only issue with this Creed, as far as I can see, is its color. The color makes it impossible for me to discern whether or not the juice itself is authentic, based on any visuals, but I can say it's in the right color family - arguably a little TOO green.

      Delete
    10. I just ran into this blog and thread on Creed. I have some questions for you.

      I own a few creeds. My 2.5 oz VIW (purchased in 2013) has 2 different lot numbers etched on the bottle, one is etched at the little rim at the bottom, the other just above it above the rim, and it was purchased from Neiman Marcus. One lot number matches the bottom of the box the other matches nothing. I made Neiman's open a few boxes of VIW to compare this oddity. They had 5 that had the same 2 lot batch number etchings, the rest were all on the rim.

      Is this one of the things that doesn't make sense with Creed fragrances?

      Also - here is a question for you: what about the wording: "toilet water PGS" etched on a Creed. Is this a sign of a fake? My Googling efforts indicate a thread on basenotes which states that "toilet water PGS" is authentic but a grey market fragrance. Is grey market = to fake?
      Additionally, I have heard of some Creeds folio only coming in Arabic. Is this a sign of a fake?

      Delete
    11. Hello, Anonymous, and thanks for stopping by.

      I am sorry but I do not have answers to your questions. My understanding is that Creed frequently changes their packaging and modes of authentication, so it is possible that the unmatching numbers are a part of some arcane system comprehensible only by the people at Creed. I recommend that you call the Creed boutique directly and ask them your questions. In my experience, they are very friendly and helpful and are willing to converse at great length with customers about these matters.

      All of that said, Neiman Marcus is definitely one of their official retailers, so I'd be surprised if they ended up with any fakes, since being an official retailer means that the connection is direct, with no potentially corruptible intermediaries (middle men), at least as far as I know...

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    12. Thank you for your reply Shera Pop.

      Yes, I don't doubt Neiman Marcus sells authentic Creed parfum. It is interesting that there were 2 batch codes printed/etched on the bottle.

      I also wanted to let you know, regarding the link Bryan Ross sent you listed above (on a real Creed, albeit GIT but still authentic none the less). The link states that the box has the words Millésime on the front of the box and MILLESIME on the back without the acute accent (accent aigu - é) to throw off counterfeiters. However my VIW has the accent aigu on the front and back. It also lists the date 1760 under the creed logo on the front but not on the top of the box. My box also has the lower case lettering on the top of the box. Additionally, the folio insert, mine is flat grey card stock. It is not grained (darker paper fibers visible in the card stock). It also lists the logo and then the date 1760 in gold. Not the words "more than a hunderd years of experience". The story has these words "favourite" and "travelling" which are spelled with the Kings English or UK English not American English. Also in the second sentence my folio has "court of England" not "Court of England", and the names in the first paragraph reflect "Joseph and Elisabeth of Austria-Hungary" with the name Elisabeth spelled with an 's' vs 'z'. And that is the folio out of a Neiman Marcus purchased bottle. I even went back to check out the folio in 2 other bottles same size and Nordstrom before I posted this. These changes are also the same on Royal Oud.

      These are interesting observations. Probably why when you call Creed they don't specifically say this is right or wrong, but rather the only way to know you have authentic product is to purchase from a Creed Boutique or an authorized retailer (Sak's, Bergdorf Goodman, Barney's, Neiman Marcus, select Nordstrom, Harrod's, and Holt Renfrew, )

      That said, I have heard of people getting authentic product with arabic folio's and words printed on the bottle "toilet water pgs". I was wondering if you know if that is truly authentic or grey market and if grey market is likely just = to fake? Because the only place to buy Creed I thought was in Dubai at the Creed Boutique.

      Thanks for your input and help

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    13. As far as I know, "gray market" just means part of the discount emporium circuit. They generally trade in authentic perfume, but occasionally they'll wind up with a shipment of fakes (from the black market--where full-fledged fakes are fabricated from start to finish, including packaging).

      However, the discounters I've dealt with have generous and liberal return policies, as in the case of the one from which I bought the Tabarome shown in the images above. Gray market to me connotes an indirect line to usually genuine perfume, with a few exceptions now and then--so no guarantee of authenticity, but a willingness to accept returns for a full refund. The gray marketers would not be in the business of producing packaging, of course, so if the "toilet water pgs" is not found on genuine Creeds, then that would reveal that the provenance was really black market.

      Hmmm.... so, again, I am sorry but I do not know about the "toilet water pgs" text--if you call Creed, please let us know what they say! ;-)

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  10. There are many green images. Not my fault you can't find them.

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    1. Really? Where? Pray tell! Please provide some links!

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  11. In this digital age, pictures can and do lie all the time. What an ignorant thing for Bryan to say "Pictures do not lie".

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    1. I believe that Bryan meant "unphotoshopped pictures don't lie". ;-)

      He took the pictures of his GIT, so he knows that they were not photoshopped.

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  12. Quote from the pop: "My reception from the house-carded sample to the discounter-procured bottle was a 180 degree turn-around from love to disgust!"

    "reception"???????

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  13. Bryan needs a "girl" to rescue him....LOL...too funny

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0RKxZEzRBU

    That looks green to me. Of course I have to be there yet again to guide you all.

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    1. Thanks for the link.

      That looks yellow to me, but I own that it is tinged ever-so-slightly green.
      Still, it is *nothing* like the peridot in the (not-photoshopped!) images above!

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    2. Thank you for standing by the not-photoshopped image taken by your friend. There is something to be said for blind allegiance.

      Cameras don't always photograph to true color. Camera quality varies, and room lighting can make variations. The bottle above looks to have some green glass at the bottom which if it does would change the true color in the overhead shot.

      Something people never speak of (except for me of course) :)

      Is that fragrance color variations may not just be due to the usual reasons though of, but it's quite possible they could be deliberately changed due to market research on what sells best and what is in fashion at the moment.

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    3. These are excellent points to keep in mind when considering "accuracy" in photographic depictions.

      You are right that, if the bottom of the bottle were made of green glass, then that would impart a green color to the liquid. In fact, in this case, the bottle was completely clear, as could be seen by turning it upside down and looking through the glass (the unfilled volume) without the liquid.

      But I agree that lighting really can change things, so maybe the green was made more vivid by the flash of the camera? It's possible...

      That's also an interesting point about changes made as a result of marketing research. I wonder whether Creed does that. I have no doubt that designers do...

      Thank you for sharing these thoughts!

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    4. In the first photo what makes the bottom glass portion look so green compared to the visible liquid up top?

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    5. The rim of green on the bottle appears to be a refraction of that blueish book its sitting on!

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    6. It's that dark green stand, which was used to elevate the bottle.

      You can see the stand better in some of the other pictures. I see now that you are right: it is imparting a green demeanor to the bottom part of the bottle in the first picture. Thanks.

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    7. After Bryan boy confessed to misspeaking (common day term for either lying or ignorance), he then tried to claim older bottle in a newer box.

      I say he misspoke again.

      Here is a random photo off of ebay, and it looks very much like the pop's. No e on the box or the bottle.

      The perfume even is tinted green rather than amber or yellow. And don't forget that is brown wood behind the bottle and glass to influence the coloring.

      http://i.ebayimg.com/t/TABAROME-by-Creed-4-0-oz-Millesime-edp-Cologne-Spray-for-Men-New-In-Box-/00/s/NzY4WDEwMjQ=/$T2eC16FHJGoE9nuQeWioBQ7Lc(1JOw~~60_57.JPG

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    8. Yes, that's right Bryan (sorry, I just saw your post after I had already published mine).

      The second image is the most helpful in considering the color issue, because the stand is not present at all. The bottle is sitting on a white surface.

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    9. Thanks, Anonymous for that ebay link.

      I agree: that bottle and box look very similar to the one in the images above...

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    10. So anonymous, by posting that link, you're basically confirming that ebay sellers are prone to selling green-hued Tabarome Millesime? Just trying to figure out what you're attempting to point out here. That the box/bottle being of different ages is untrue? To be honest none of the aging issues matter much to me, because Creed uses different design techniques on most of their boxes. I can only go by what I've read online and what I own myself. I can say with certainty from Sher's pictures that the bottle and the box are real. It's impossible to say with certainty if the Creed in the ebay link you've provided is real or not, sorry. Not enough information there at all. Whether or not the juice in either Sher's picture or the ebay picture is real is not possible to determine without smelling it myself. Refer to my link for GIT for an accurate appraisal of how a recent Creed box should look, but don't take it as gospel that if you order a Creed today from the Creed boutique, your box will be identical to mine. I haven't purchased a Millesime in a couple of years and cannot say whether or not they've changed their packaging details again since 2011.

      In regards to the greenish hue, thank you for re-enforcing my original point about Tabarome having that color. Whatever vintage is pictured, if real, would likely be at least two or three years old, long enough for the juice, if stored incorrectly, to further "green up" and appear abnormal.

      All of this discussion makes me want to just buy a bottle myself and see what it looks like firsthand, fresh out of their warehouse in jersey.

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    11. I agree, Bryan: let's all just go buy fresh bottles from the source and then compare notes--above all, about the scent! ;-)

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    12. Whether the photos are 100% color accurate are not, there are far more Tabarome photos on google images, ebay, youtube or fragrance blogs showing slightly beige/yellow/amber colored juice.

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    13. I'm having the same issue with the color of the juice being verdant and thinking that it's 'old' (which we've established it shouldn't be) or fake (which is at least plausible). If my 6 year old bottle (now about 1/2 full) is still the same light yellow color as it was when purchased, something isn't right and it underscores my suspicions about the juice.

      Since you purchased it from a grey-market source, are you under any restrictions in naming the source to help determine how reputable they are in selling other products that are sketchy?

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    14. Andrew, the discounter responded with alacrity to my concerns, providing free shipping back and RMA, so I do not want to punish them, since they have honored their claim to "satisfaction guaranteed". I have had no other problems with the many other bottles which I've acquired from them, including Prada, Annick Goutal, Guerlain, Hermès, the list goes on and on...

      That said, it's one of the big discounters, and I am quite sure that the same thing goes on at all of them: they sell their bottles--regardless of their authenticity (which they simply assume on the word of their suppliers)--for the most part to people who have no prior experience with Creed and therefore do not raise the sorts of questions which those of us with experience are able to raise. If only 5% of their customers return dubious Creeds, then it still remains profitable. They are able to accommodate the occasional wayward skeptic without undue strife (and loss of income)....

      Some of the Creed bottles which they sell are no doubt genuine and in good condition. In the end, it's all a game of chance...

      Caveat Emptor!

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    15. Caveat Emptor indeed. The key with Creed, if you are a customer with little experience buying grey market Creeds, is to look for their less popular offerings. I firmly believe that there are nine Creeds that get counterfeited - competently counterfeited - due to their incredible popularity, and some stragglers with poor counterfeiters. Green Irish Tweed, MI, SMW, Himalaya, Aventus (sketchy details but it's a popular one so I'd beware), VIW, OS, and OV. BdP used to only come in the 2.5 oz size, and recently got upgraded to 4 oz, and I don't think counterfeiters are keen on imitating it due to that switcharoo and the fact that it's a relatively "stodgy" Creed. Unsure of how big a seller it is, because there aren't any toiletries to go with it. You have to remember something: with GIT, counterfeiters simply put Lancaster Cool Water in the bottle, and presto, a counterfeited GIT is born. With MI they shove Aqua di Gio in there and probably mix it with some woody sport scent to throw discerning noses off. With SMW I'm beginning to wonder if Al Rehab contributes to forgeries (Silver is THAT close), but I don't often come across stories about fake SMW so I'm just bringing it up as a "popular" creed that deserves scrutiny. Himalaya bottles get filled with Paco Rabanne XS. VIW gets the 'ol Tommy Bahama or Bath and Body Works treatment (again, don't often read about fake VIW but it definitely happens), OV gets Mugler Cologne, and OS gets Mont Blanc Individuel - which is so close that if I happened across 4 ounces of Individuel in a faux Creed I'd actually keep the darn thing - Mont Blanc only sells that frag in 2.5 oz bottles! Aventus, I don't know about fakes, although I can say that it's Creed's second biggest seller and now that Fresco is out there, who knows.

      Neroli Sauvage, Tabarome, Royal Water, Royal Oud, EROLFA, Royal Ceylon, and Green Valley very likely see counterfeiting rarely to not at all. What could get swapped into those bottles? I guess you could throw a standard no-frills EDC into Royal Water bottles and try to pass it off, so of these seven I'd say it's the most likely to see counterfeiting. The rest, forget it - Neroli Sauvage isn't popular enough, Tabarome definitely isn't popular enough, Royal Oud is too new for concern, EROLFA is too weird to duplicate, Royal Ceylon is never even mentioned anywhere in the blogosphere and otherwise, I doubt counterfeiters even know it exists, and Green Valley has been discontinued for some time, and even if it was still in production, would be too difficult to convincingly pass off.

      I'd wager that none of the feminine Creeds, with the exception of perhaps Spring Flower, LiW, and LiB, get counterfeited - and of those three Spring Flower is the only one that would be relatively easy for counterfeiters. When was the last time you heard of anyone complain about a fake Vanisia?

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    16. Hi Bryan,

      Thanks so much for this excellent run-down and comparison of Creed men's perfumes to designer analogues! Very helpful.

      As for the feminines, I agree that Vanisia is so obscure that no one would bother. How to fake it, anyway--and who would know or care? I recently saw a bottle (not tester) at a discounter going for only $85, and I'm sure it's genuine--it's just not a big seller, so the price has dipped in response to the lack of market demand. But nothing else smells anything like it, and I guess that Cher's endorsement hasn't helped appreciably. ;-)

      Irisia is another good example of an obscure feminine Creed which probably sells so poorly that it would not be worth attempting to fake. Maybe it could be faked with Jacomo Silences + random solvents.

      Spring Flower could be faked with Bond no 9 Chelsea Flowers--except that it costs nearly as much! ;-) Love in Black and Love in White have very distinctive scents--whether one likes them or not, this can hardly be denied--but they, like Spring Flower, probably are faked since they appear to be big sellers thanks in part to the boosts they get from name-droppable users such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie, and Michelle Obama.

      Incidentally, in the cases of Love in White, Love in Black, and Spring Flower, the bottles are opaque, so no issues with the juice color can even arise. Fill those bottles with peridot, fuchsia, citrine, Windex blue--who would know?

      I also wanted to thank you for posting your illuminating B&B forum thread at your blog. It should be widely read!

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    17. Bryan shortsightedness #432A: The idea that 7 Creeds are not counterfeited.

      Hmmmm...if I was a counterfeiter what would I counterfeit....something that everyone believed was counterfeited to saturation like Chanels....OR...

      The 7 Creeds Bryce believes no one would counterfeit....hmmmmmmm...I wonder. =o|

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    18. Clearly Bryan was speculating, but I think that he made a plausible and persuasive case...

      What is it like to be a counterfeiter? How do their minds work? Who knows? They remind me a bit of cheaters at college who go to unbelievable lengths to acquire the answers to exams and to plagiarize papers, when it would have been easier just to succeed by learning the material or producing something new.

      In these days of proliferating niche houses, why not just become a "self-taught perfumer"? ;-)

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    19. Counterfeiters counterfeit products that make the most money. They don't put their overhead into products that are slow sellers. No profit in that. Therefore it's easy to conclude that roughly half the Creed line see little to no counterfeiting, and what counterfeiting is done is likely poor enough for a five year-old to spot. Counterfeiting is more than just swapping genuine juice out for Windex. They go to great lengths (and some considerable expense) to re-create the bottles, atomizers, boxes, etc. No brainer here.

      Delete
  14. Maybe putting the bottle on a green stand wasn't the best of scientific methods....LOL :0|

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    1. Agreed! At least one of the bottle images in on white. ;-)

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  15. I like the comment about Creed doing all sorts of things to the packaging to confuse counterfeiters. The obvious problem with that idea is that if everyone is confused and they don't offer some sort a free authentication service, then it makes it very easy for a faker to just say the say that very same thing if the customer says the packing doesn't look right !

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  16. DUHHHHHH....me bigsly...me see obvious....UH HUH UH HUH.

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    1. I thought that bigsly's point was good. In fact, as I was dozing off last night, it occurred to me that there might even be a Creed conspiracy involved: confounding not counterfeiters but customers, so that they lose all faith in any source but the boutique.

      Well, read above: it worked on me! ;-)

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    2. Making many variations of the bottle or label ONLY helps counterfeiters. It's kind of why money is only printed one way.

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    3. That's what I was thinking when I concocted my mini-conspiracy theory... ;-)

      In fact, when you call Creed to try to ascertain authenticity, they basically tell you that anything could be true: the lot number can be etched on the edge of the bottle, printed on a label slapped on the box, printed on the bottom of the bottle, the possibilities go on and on...

      They've been in business for so long that completely different teams of people have determined which systems to use. Nothing valid today needs to have been valid ten years ago, and many of the bottles floating about in the gray market are of uncertain age and origin!

      Once again, in the end, one comes away with little confidence in anything but the fresh boutique bottles themselves!

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    4. The entire concocted theory that Creed has been doing perfumes for 600 years of whatever is an elaborate hoax. There is no evidence besides Creeds own made up story. It's brilliant actually.

      There's nothing wrong or conspiratorial on anyone's part to only trust the boutique. That's how it's supposed to be.

      Why not take some more pictures of your bottle in various light including in front of a window or something. I don't think it's as green as Andrew "dumb" Buck believes it to be. Oh way, he chose the word "verdant"....LOL.... Can you say poseur? I knew you could :)

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    5. I'm not sure whether it matters how much or what parts of the Creed legend are true. To me at least, all that matters is the quality of the perfume.

      Sorry, the above pictures are all that we have. The bottle is long gone--probably in the possession of some other sorry soul by now!

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    6. Why not send me some Jardin d'Amalfi?

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    7. Sorry, I don't have any. (Does anyone?)

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    8. Perhaps I should have made friends here. =0(

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    9. Bigsly makes an interesting point, but it's easy to disprove. Creed boxes never change dramatically, they change subtly, and the changes are consistent throughout the range. How long they last depends on how long the company desires a certain design to remain in place. Owning older and newer Creeds, I can say for certain that spotting a fake is made easier by paying attention to the details. I spotted one recently at a brick and mortar store in CT that was not obviously fake at a glance, but all you had to do was read the French spelling mistakes.

      The idea is to use MANY elements in packaging, as opposed to just a few, but these elements are not so complicated that they can't be summed up in a single thread post, as I've linked to above. With counterfeiting you're dealing with criminals. Criminals are inherently stupid. They often fail to pay attention to basic things, like spelling, exact coloring, embossing. A good design integrates these elements in a direct, recognizable manner.

      Customer ignorance is what allows the crooks to get away with it.

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    10. "Criminals are inherently stupid."--well, except the ones who never get caught! ;-)

      This reminds me of a quote from the series "Homicide". I believe that the wording was:

      "Crime makes you stupid."

      In the episode where this was said, the person in question had obviously done massive amounts of drugs and seemed to be completely fried. But I'm not so sure that it would be true in general. Savvy drug dealers, for example, don't touch the stuff they sell...

      Anyway, thanks for all of these points, Bryan. I completely agree with your concluding statement:

      "Customer ignorance is what allows the crooks to get away with it."

      No question about that!

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    11. I don't know Sher, the way you're putting this, it makes me think of the question, "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a sound?" Criminal behavior is, in my mind, stupid regardless of whether they get caught. Everything comes with a price, especially success, and that includes success in criminal endeavors. By counterfeiting Creed, buying real Creeds has become a wider-spread customer focus, and as places like Walgreens peddle their wares to millions, faking suddenly becomes more difficult because customers have been buying the real thing in greater numbers, directly against the tide of counterfeiting.

      In recent months I find myself encountering fewer and fewer "is this Creed fake" threads than of years gone by . . . I can only conclude it is because people are finally getting enough experience owning multiple bottles of the genuine article that the old tricks are gradually losing their impact on the grey market. Some of the fakes are so obvious that it really does boil down to someone completely ignorant of what the product is as the only likely victim.

      I've always felt that criminals approach things from the vantage point of assuming that people are basically dumb enough to fall for anything. It's about insulting people's intelligence. That's why assuming that a complex Creed package design would "confuse customers" is a criminal premise, not a civilian viewpoint. People are smarter than that, and when they ask questions they're learning from their mistakes (hence all the wisely-posted "is this fake" threads).

      Ultimately it comes down to what I said in one of my earliest comments - experiencing a Creed is a synaptic reflex akin to recognizing pornography - "you know it when you smell it." You have experience with Creed, and your doubt about the smell is what makes me pause as to whether or not they sold you real juice. The packaging is real, but the fragrance itself was likely tampered with or very old. A fresh, genuine Creed is unmistakable in quality and complexity, and you can bypass all kinds of question marks by just spritzing once and giving it a minute on skin.

      Bigsly mentioned earlier on my blog that he swapped for a GIT that had faulty atomizer "tubing" - another mark of a genuine Creed. My GIT's atomizer leaked profusely from the seams for the first twenty or thirty sprays, immediately out of the box. Peruse the boards and find similar experiences by owners of real Creeds. so it's kind of funny to say it, but if you know Creed well enough you also know to look for their flaws! If your bottle is leaking or having atomizer issues, congrats!

      In any case, reading responses to this article has been very interesting. Good points regarding the counterfeiting of feminines btw - it would be funny to find Spring Flower containing Chelsea Flowers!

      One last thing - there are a few threads on BN about lot numbers being "solved" and people figuring out how to interpret their batch using the code. I believe they're on to something, but none of it has ever been conclusively backed up by Creed, so it's a little hard to say how much accurate info can be gleaned by lot numbers. I think the year of the batch is the most likely outcome of these interpretations, but there's more to it than that.

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    12. Thanks for these additional thoughts, Bryan.

      I think of criminal behavior along the lines of the "free rider" problem. The free rider jumps over the subway gate and rides free, but this is possible only because most everyone else pays. More generally, criminals succeed to the extent to which they do because they violate rules which most everyone else follows. To take a closely related example, the reason why athletes involved in doping scandals are regarded as dishonorable is because they did not play fair. In the case of mercenary criminals, I suspect that they think of themselves as particularly savvy businessmen. Think of Harry Lime in The Third Man, who regards his penicillin racket as a clever scheme for taxfree income. Such criminals think of themselves as extraordinarily clever, but in reality they are simply cheaters. Certainly some of them are stupid, as you say. Perhaps even many of them.

      Now think of Ponzi operators such as Madoff. For decades the guy was riding high on his wave of success, no doubt thinking that he was ingenious for having "outwitted" his investors. These sorts of people violate society's presumption of trust, and that is the only reason why they succeed. Left to their own devices, playing by the rules which everyone else follows, they would not have enjoyed the same success.

      So when I said that the criminals who never get caught are not stupid, that's what I mean. They know how far they can go before they must stop. The others all fall because they become less vigilant, plumped up as they are by their sense of their own power and success to that point.

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    13. But Sher, every one of the criminals you've mentioned, including Harry Lime and the dopers, got caught - and the free ride thing only works so many times before you get caught at that, too. Getting caught in any capacity, even with light consequences, is part of being a criminal - to truly succeed at breaking the law, you must be someone who eludes that which is not actually law, but which people suppose should be law, i.e. someone like Anne Frank. The Nazis attempted to make laws that the greater population deemed unfit for humanity, and Ms. Frank rightfully bypassed all of them, before being caught and sadly dying from typhus.

      But I understand what you mean regarding the intelligence of the criminals - intellectually, some of them are not actually stupid people. But the state of being a criminal is intrinsically stupid, low on intellect, at least in my opinion. And it is true that the ones who fall faster are those who got high on their own worth and let their guard down.

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    14. Thanks, Bryan, point well taken.

      Of course, whenever we talk about criminals we can only name those who have been caught. The successful ones are to all appearances not criminals. I cannot resist bringing up another movie example (especially since I know in an advance that you'll be familiar with any example which I might adduce! ;-)).

      Let's take Judah from Woody Allen's "Crimes and Misdemeanors". From the film, we know that he has embezzled money, and he hired a hitman to "take out" his mistress not only because she was threatening to reveal their affair to his wife, but also because she knew about his financial "indiscretions". The mistress gets whacked; Judah continues on in his position as a highly esteemed member of the community and an admired ophthalmologist.

      So there's an example for you. He's clearly not stupid. He's clearly a criminal, and he never gets caught. We cannot draw upon such examples in reality because those people are not known to be criminals because they haven't been caught, and we do not have the privileged narrator's (filmmaker's) perspective on them.

      Anyway, we are basically in agreement here. Thanks again so much for your contributions to this entire discussion, which I've really enjoyed and found most fruitful!

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    15. That was a great movie. But Allen always defers to the Greek tragedy model of morality, in which the villain appears to get away with murder, but ultimately suffers his excruciating conscience, almost to the point of insanity. Match Point was another example of that.

      It's too bad we don't have movie blogs!!!

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    16. It's always refreshing to admire the work of a pedophile. I'm sure you think Polanski is a genius too.

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    17. My own approach to works is to evaluate them independently, as objects in and of themselves. A film is a film, with its strengths and weaknesses altogether distinct from those of its creator.

      A propos of Polanski: if you're going to bring in his history, why not also the fact that his bride-to-be, Sharon Tate, was brutally massacred by the Manson family? That's no excuse for his later behavior, of course, but I'm just saying that people become what they become for all sorts of reasons inaccessible to me. That's why I stick with the works. I am not in a position to judge human beings.

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    18. When it comes to Polanski, even the woman he allegedly assaulted does not want him to be prosecuted. I understand she likes his movies, however. The man is, by all counts, an affirmed genius. Love his films.

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    19. Let's calm down, shake hands, and agree to disagree on the question whether it is okay to like the films of Woody Allen and Roman Polanski, and whether one must consider their checkered personal histories in evaluating their films.

      I invite you to move over to the new lexicon entry (#11) about utilitarianism, which just went up today.

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  17. Tell the morons you bought it at Fragrancenet, must you censor EVERYTHING!!!!!!

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    1. I did not buy the bottle from Fragrancenet! I have acquired many bottles from them, but this one was not purchased there... ;-)

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  18. If you would say where you bought it then that would provide even more evidence that it is not fake, which it is not. Just allude to where you bought it. Pig Latin..... I have seen the green Tabarome before also so that isnt strange. Different batches have different colors. How long ago did you test this one? Are you sure you were not testing Vintage Tabarome, which is a completely different fragrance?

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    1. Hello, heperd, and welcome to the salon de parfum!

      You have raised some excellent questions. It is indeed possible, I suppose, that I tested Vintage Tabarome. However, my sample came from an authorized dealer (Parfums Raffy), and in a Creed-produced and labeled vial (I had purchased their sample sets).

      I wrote the above review in 2010, so it's been nearly three years. I do own that any number of things could have happened, including reformulation. The most important point is that I was dissatisfied with the juice and would never, ever have worn 120 ml of it, so I needed to return the bottle, as I did.

      Based on my prior experience, I believe that the bottle was a fake, but the emporium fully refunded my money with no questions or hesitation whatsoever, and they also paid for the return shipping. I suspect that it went back onto the shelf and out to another customer who had never smelled Creed Tabarome before and was likely satisfied with the purchase. I do not wish to reveal the name of the store because I am convinced that it was a fake and that this happens all the time. My advice remains:

      Caveat Emptor!

      People need to know that these discounters will and do refund money when customers are dissatisfied. I think that some customers probably "settle" for what they get because they think that since it's a discounter they should not complain. Not true. Their customer service (and this holds for all of the discounters which I regularly use), in my experience, is just as good as that at Amazon (which is superlative, in my experience).

      So I'm not going to name the name, but simply advise people who are skeptical about the authenticity of whatever they buy--or dissatisfied in any way whatsoever--to use that 1800 or 1877 number and talk to a customer service representative. They will be happy to comply with your request for a return. I have had problems in the past with already sprayed (supposedly) new bottles, etc., and I have never had a problem in securing a replacement or a refund.

      Thanks for weighing in, heperd! Let me reiterate that I agree that it is possible that the bottle was not fake, but I believe that it was.

      Delete
  19. Also, fake Creeds smell like disgusting poison. So if it smells good at all then it is real.

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    Replies
    1. I was under the impression that fakes were generally made through dilution with solvents of a real Creed. This would produce a soupçon of the real perfume, but it would lack oomph and longevity. Depending on the solvents used, it could smell awful or just weak...

      Fakers are in business for reason--it's profitable--so some of what they do must fool someone, no? ;-)

      Delete
  20. I bought a 4 oz. bottle of Creed Silver Mountain Water this year from an obscure internet source because it was a fraction of the cost. It was an experiment, because the price was so low I thought it probably would be a fake or have some other problem. Interestingly, when I got it, the box said Green Irish Tweed. I didn't open it (wrapped in celophane) because I was going to return for the correct fragrance, but when e-mailed, the seller told me that the correct scent bottle was inside. The reason for the price was that the boxes had been mixed up by Creed. Upon opening, it was the correct bottle inside, and the fragrance was genuine Silver Mountain Water.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. What a strange story, Jean Holman! Thank you for sharing your experience!

      It sounds as though the seller must have had a whole palette of the wrongly boxed bottles, otherwise why not simply remove them from the box? Let's see, would that have made the bottles more or less likely to be accepted as genuine? I'd say more, since genuine testers are definitely out there.

      It's kind of baffling, actually, now that I think about it, since I presume that most people would interpret the wrong box as clear evidence of fakery...

      Delete
  21. As someone who has worked for Creed in previous years and been fully trained on the line, the author is paranoid and not educated on how to validate a Creed Perfume. The perfume in these photos is NOT fake and I can guarantee it to be authentic. Typical mass hysteria like the uneducated people that aren't aware that Creed has also changed its perfume caps twice (the newest authentic caps don't have Creed written on them). I can't stand people who lack any knowledge and just assume "It must be fake." Totally idiotic and damaging to the brands reputation.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The essay considers a question: "Is this Creed a fake?"

      No one claimed that "It must be a fake."

      You might want to work on your reading comprehension skills. Maybe give the post a second read and write up an outline of the main points?

      Just a friendly suggestion, Anonymous...

      Delete
  22. oh please,stop these annoying is this creed fake posts. Buy from a licenced seller

    ReplyDelete

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