Entry #26: A Philosophical Lexicon for Perfumistas

mutatis mutandis

[Necessary] "changes having been made" or mutatis mutandis is used by philosophers to indicate in a discussion about two different things that they are relevantly similar (in the manner under discussion), as can be seen as soon as the irrelevant differences are cleared out of the way. How in the world does this relate to perfume? you are now perhaps wondering. Or, more likely, you have already navigated away from this page.

How about knock-offs? Let's say that Bond no 9 Nuits de Noho is basically Thierry Mugler Angel, mutatis mutandis. So if you change everything about Nuits de Noho that makes it different from Angel, then it will simply become Angel, right? Which therefore proves that it was not a knock-off  because MAJOR CHANGES had to be made before the two perfumes became equivalent.

Yet people make these sorts of claims all the time. When someone says that a new perfume is an Angel knock-off, the clear insinuation is that it is a rip-off, in the sense that the idea was stolen from the creators of Angel. I do not personally buy the idea that every sweet patchouli perfume in the universe was inspired by Angel. In fact, I am quite sure that that is false.

Take Molinard Nirmala, for example. Having been launched fifty years before Angel, it would seem to follow that if any theft has taken place, it was in the opposite direction. In reality, that seems highly unlikely, too. Perfumers hit on good ideas all the time, and certain combinations of notes become readily recognizable as reminiscent of what has come to be regarded as an iconic perfume. The creators of the later perfume may or may not have had any familiarity with what is taken to be "the original" by those who allege plagiarism, holding their lit torches high above their heads, entirely unaware that they illuminate their own ugly faces much more brightly than the object of their ire.

Part of what makes the so-called knock-offs similar to what they are claimed to be knocking off is that disparate scents are brought together in new ways in perfumery. Before Chanel no 5 existed, where in the world did you encounter aldehydes and jasmine and musk all together in one place in nature? Answer: you did not. That is why subsequent to the launch of Chanel no 5, whenever you encountered that particular combination of scents, you thought of Chanel no 5. If you truly believe that the creation of Chanel no 5 was divinely inspired, that still will not explain why other perfumers in other parts of the world could not have been similarly divinely inspired.

There seems to be a bogus form of probability theory being applied in the mind of the person who cries "knock-off" whenever he encounters similar combinations of scents first experienced together in a single named perfume. It's similar to the "logic" of people who believe that beautiful women cannot also be intelligent. Somehow that combination of desirable traits is considered  some sort of affront to cosmic justice and probability theory. Sure a person can be ugly, fat, and stupid, but beautiful, lithe, and brilliant? No, that would be unfair.

Hmmm... I do not seem to be getting any closer to a perfume example of mutatis mutandis, but I distinctly recall having used this expression in a recent comment at the salon de parfum, which is in fact why I decided to add it to the lexicon. If you will kindly grant me leave I shall go look for that comment. Back in a jiffy...

What a bonanza--check out what a quick Google brought up:

1. sherapop's salon de parfum: Perfumes, Persons, and Poems: A ...

   

   salondeparfum-sherapop.blogspot.com/.../perfumes-persons-and-poems-...‎
   

   
   

   Dec 19, 2011 - Fortunately, sherapop has arrived on the scene to get the ball rolling.... the text (mutatis mutandis)—thus establishing the identity of the two!
2. 
   

   sherapop's salon de parfum: The Toiletries Trap—or is it a safe haven?

   

   salondeparfum-sherapop.blogspot.com/.../the-toiletries-trapor-is-it-safe-h...‎
   

   
   

   Sep 20, 2012 - Of course, the same is true, mutatis mutandis, for successful chefs. They are not hired by restaurants unless they have demonstrated their  ...
   

   
   

   sherapop's salon de parfum: PERFUME IS NOT MILK: Is the price of ...

3. 

   salondeparfum-sherapop.blogspot.com/.../perfume-is-not-milk-is-price-o...‎
   

   
   

   Feb 25, 2012 - But sticking with the example at hand, the case of sherapop: If someone ... The same argument applies, mutatis mutandis, to virtually any other  ...
   

   
   

   sherapop's salon de parfum: March 2013
   

   
4. salondeparfum-sherapop.blogspot.com/2013_03_01_archive.html‎
   

   
   

   Mar 31, 2013 - I realize that the salon de parfum has been in existence now for more..... which I confess to have found equally applicable, mutatis mutandis,  ...
5. 
   

   sherapop's salon de parfum: I fell head over heels with Lanvin ...

   

   salondeparfum-sherapop.blogspot.com/.../i-fell-head-over-heels-with-lan...‎
   

   
   

   Mar 11, 2013 - ... bottles of Allure eau de toilette and eau de parfum within arm's reach. ... which I confess to have found equally applicable, mutatis mutandis,  ...
6. 
   

   sherapop's salon de parfum: December 2011

   

   salondeparfum-sherapop.blogspot.com/2011_12_01_archive.html‎
   

   
   

   Dec 3, 2011 - Fortunately, sherapop has arrived on the scene to get the ball rolling.... the text (mutatis mutandis)—thus establishing the identity of the two!
7. 
   

   sherapop's salon de parfum: September 2012

   

   salondeparfum-sherapop.blogspot.com/2012_09_01_archive.html‎
   

   
   

   Sep 13, 2012 - ... III, Scene II. Posted by Shera Pop at 10:34 PM 7 comments .... Of course, the same is true, mutatis mutandis, for successful chefs. They are not  ...
8. 
   

   sherapop's salon de parfum: Luca Turin on the Perfume Houses ...

   

   salondeparfum-sherapop.blogspot.com/.../luca-turin-on-perfume-houses-...‎
   

   
   

   Mar 2, 2012 - Ironically, this very blog, sherapop's salon de parfum, owes its existence ...... I do not, and you find it helpful (mutatis mutandis to the star ratings.
   

   You've visited this page 2 times. Last visit: 2/20/13
9. 
   

   sherapop's salon de parfum: February 2012

   

   salondeparfum-sherapop.blogspot.com/2012_02_01_archive.html‎
   

   
   

   Feb 25, 2012 - The same argument applies, mutatis mutandis, to virtually any other... Scent Vial Trial (marvelously mentored by salonista Awesomeness), The  ...

Yes, it appears that I really did need to define mutatis mutandis!
Well, there is some overlap above, but feel free to do your own Google and see where it takes you!!

Here are the results using the more refined search box installed on the right column of the salon de parfum:

...............................................................

Perfumes, Persons, and Poems: A Triangular Investigation

Dec 19, 2011

Bear in mind that the basic idea here is that the word 'poem' can be read in the place of the word 'perfume', and vice versa, throughout the text (mutatis mutandis)—thus establishing the identity of the two! Ten Platitudes about ...

http://salondeparfum-sherapop.blogspot.com/

sherapop's salon de parfum: Luca Turin on the Perfume Houses ...

Mar 03, 2012

So, in the end, since you enjoy reading it, while I do not, and you find it helpful (mutatis mutandis to the star ratings...) while I do not, I guess that we just have to agree to disagree about the value of The Holey [sic] Book!

http://salondeparfum-sherapop.blogspot.com/

sherapop's salon de parfum: I fell head over heels with Lanvin ...

Mar 11, 2013

A prescription which I confess to have found equally applicable, mutatis mutandis, to my attitude in the morning when opting first to prepare coffee before acknowledging the existence of anyone else. It is also the ...

http://salondeparfum-sherapop.blogspot.com/

sherapop's salon de parfum: The Toiletries Trap—or is it a safe haven?

Sep 20, 2012

Of course, the same is true, mutatis mutandis, for successful chefs. They are not hired by restaurants unless they have demonstrated their dependability at producing pleasing food which patrons will want to consume.

http://salondeparfum-sherapop.blogspot.com/

sherapop's salon de parfum: PERFUME IS NOT MILK: Is the price of ...

Feb 25, 2012

The same argument applies, mutatis mutandis, to virtually any other possession which is not necessary to your existence. There are necessities, and there are necessities, of course, and they will obviously vary from case to ...

http://salondeparfum-sherapop.blogspot.com/

...............................................................

I see now that I sometimes seem to use this expression interchangeably with "for all intents and purposes". The final example, however, seems to work:

"The same argument applies, mutatis mutandis, to virtually any other possession which is not necessary to your existence."

So when you take the argument in question and substitute the word perfume for the thing to which it is being compared, then the final result will be the same argument--except for that word, which is not relevant to the structure of the argument itself.

Perhaps the time has arrived simply to expunge the expression mutatis mutandis altogether from my private dictionary. I did that a while back with qua, another somewhat annoying Latin expression favored by philosophers.

The ultimate problem with mutatis mutandis is the complete failure of ceteris paribus...

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 perfumes—whether 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 bought—or tried to buy—a 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: pè and re.

père  or pè and re ???

The second issue is the missing e 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.