Creed Layering - More Than Just a Marketing Gimmick
If you've ever gotten into Creed enough to be invited to any Creed marketing events, or if you've met some of the more internationally known Creed representatives like Roberto and Luis, then you've heard about layering of Creeds. Indeed, it sometimes seems as if Creed promotes layering as a way to sell multiple bottles, or perhaps as a kind of middle-class form of bespoke fragrance.
I'm not so much of a purist that I reject the idea of layering. I've not only come up with some very enjoyable combinations - I've actually learned quite a bit by layering. Nothing demonstrates where a fragrance actually is in perfume space, like moving it around a bit, and seeing where the shadows fall.
So yes, I've smelled a few layering combinations. But TODAY, something really interesting happened. My Creed rep showed me some fragrance combinations that really, really made an impression. Enough that I made multiple purchases, based not on ANY of the fragrances alone, but rather ONLY on maximizing the number of great combinations that were possible.
The three fragrances that I added to my collection were Tubereuse Indiana, Millesime Imperial, and Silver Mountain Water. I have bypassed ALL of these fragrances over the years. But today I discovered that these are ideal fragrances for layering. Why, exactly?
Tubereuse Indiana
No, this isn't some small Hoosier town located a few hundred miles from my log cabin. This is a classic feminine that I would describe as floral, ornate, and not exactly ready for "guy time". I would only be wearing this one in the evening, or on the weekend, at home, and I probably wouldn't be enjoying it all that much, since tuberose and I are barely on speaking terms.
HOWEVER.....
Mix this stuff with a variety of stuffy and staid masculines, and it's like putting a Hawaii shirt on the accountant, and giving him a hot pink .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol, and a huge tropical party drink. Guacamole! Jimmy Buffet concert! Whatever! All I know is that this stuff livens up every Creed masculine that it touches. The classic men's stuff just gets more elegant and more noticeable. The newer men's stuff gets some real gravitas - some extra classic feel that is really welcome to those who don't find much interest in the newer men's millesimes.
One day ago, I would not have believed it. But today I'm drinking the Kool-Aid. Er, I mean the Tubereuse Indiana.
Millesime Imperial
If you want to add modernity - without sacrificing class - just add MI. This popular fragrance mixes solidly with a lot of stuff, but the mix with Tubereuse Indiana is heavenly. I've never thought much of MI - it was the one men's Creed that I simply couldn't "get" at all. Which probably makes Millesime Imperial the perfect foil for other Creeds. It doesn't overwhelm anything. It let's the other fragrance lead. But it adds some class, some gentleness, and some brightness - and - without wearing stomper boots or a cowboy hat - some masculinity.
Silver Mountain Water
I think this is the one that David Bowie is supposed to favor. Well, it never really grabbed me. But when I smelled this one mixed with Virgin Island Water, I realized where I had smelled the combination before - Illuminium's White Gardenia Petals, the wedding fragrance of Kate Middleton. No, it's not exactly the same. But this layering combination and that new fragrance share a certain fresh, high-pitched brilliance that just gets me. White Gardenia Petals is modern, and it's light, and yet it has the commanding power of the great, ornate classics to which it otherwise bears no simple resemblance. When I smelled White Gardenia Petals, and its restrained elegance and simple purity, I felt like I truly "got" the new English royals - their ability to translate the regal into the modern, in a way that their parents' generation could never have even conceived on its own. I suddenly had respect. I felt as if I had a glimpse into an understanding of taste far above mine. A taste that is the result of difficult mental challenge, not happy birth - because it understands the sacrifices of royalty to a greater symbolic purpose, made even harder by existing in a new era that I must struggle to grasp, as I work feverishly to extricate myself from the tentacles of history and snobbery that the classics and the past have on us, and which keep us from fully seeing the future. The future of fragrance - and everything else. Fragrance sends a message, and I felt that Kate Middleton had sent the perfect message to the world by her choice of White Gardenia Petals.
And when I smelled this brilliance once again, but in a way that really spoke to me as the kind of fragrance I could actually pull off, I jumped.
Yes, Creed layering may not be the same as a bespoke fragrance, fit for royalty.
Then again, I haven't told you how amazing Tubereuse Indiana is when you mix it with a certain fragrance called Royal Oud. Which a certain royal couple may just happen to own. But which I most certainly do. :)