Creed Aubepine Acacia

I really thought I had found my signature scents. Two perfumes that were perfect, both familiar and beautifully unsettling, and between the two of them suited to my every mood. Ah but then I was foolish and had to go and open up a bottle of Aubepine Acacia. Created by Creed in 1965 for Brigitte Bardot, it evokes dry, scrubby pines, honeyed mimosa and powdery hawthorn blossoms in a rocky, sunbaked Mediterranean forest. I get a lot of beeswax and pine sap in at first sniff - not a masculine, green pine but a drier, more arid kind. The beeswax settles into a beautiful honey scent, with notes of bright citrus, fragrant hawthorn and sweet mimosa - though all the floral notes are very dry and sunbleached, all the greenery tart and almost astringent.

The Bardot this was created for and worn by isn't the pin-up we all know so well, but the much more real one - the Bardot strolling barefoot down a dusty path in the hills above St Tropez, pants rolled up and flowers in her hair, a baby lamb under her arm and a dog or two trotting at her feet. How could I not love a scent that evokes all that? It's me. Well except for the great hair and the St Tropez part....

This reminds me just slightly, in it's dry hay-like accord, of the lovely Santa Maria Novella Fieno- though this a very different combination of notes and to my mind even lovelier, they do share a sunbleached and aromatic character. I was completely floored by how much I love this scent - I thought I had found my perfect signatures, but this may have found the heart of me more than any before.

There is a hitch in all of this I'm afraid. Always amongst the Private Collection and therefore difficult to obtain, Creed has now discontinued Aubepine Acacia. I lay on the floor and beat my fists and yelled, but it didn't change anything, and I've had to face facts. Clearly the fact that this scent feels so personal to me means it probably didn't suit a lot of people. Or possibly people are idiots, which is probably more likely. Either way, I haven't just introduced you to this gem to snatch it away from you so cruelly - you can still find decants at online boutiques like The Posh Peasant and The Perfumed Court. If you'd like to sample its loveliness, by all means, go ahead. Just make sure you don't clean out all of their stock, or you'll have me to answer to - I had better be left at least enough to last me through copious spritzing for the rest of this lifetime.

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Creed Royal Oud

I've taken months to try and put together a post describing Creed's newest fragrance, Royal Oud. Being a fresh, floral scent sort of girl, this has been quite a departure into much headier territory, and unravelling the spicy layers has taken me some long afternoons with my wrist pressed up against my nose, often in public, which is not helping my rather eccentric reputation any. But with the Orient Express as this week's getaway, and all the talk of the meeting of east and west, this felt like the perfect fragrance for that journey. This is the scent for the sunburnt Foreign Service agent across from you in the dining car.

Blending the viscous resin of the Agarwood tree of India with cedar and citrus, the first whiff of Royal Oud is that of clean, fine wood, with an almost soapy, luxurious texture. Cinnamon, angelica and sandalwood add to the exotic spiciness, but never stray from the tasteful sophistication. This is the east of Delacroix's Orientalism, a beautiful mix of British diplomat and Eastern mystic, and brings to mind the world of T.E. Lawrence, the restrained English sophistication gradually sinking into an altogether more sumptuous and exotic territory.

Were you to only sample this straight from the bottle, that's where your journey would end - a beautiful scent in itself, well crafted but nothing terribly special. Only weeks after reaching this conclusion did I discover the real magic of Royal Oud - after a short period on the skin, all the spices and sophistication dry down into a completely unexpected and mysterious soft smoke - slightly sweet fumes of dry, aromatic wood burning hot and clean, like a phoenix emerging from the flames. It's beautiful and strange, and seems to only occur when the fragrance settles into the skin.

Oud is a very trendy ingredient in fragrances at the moment, but most of them tend to play up the aggressive atringent quality of it, which can sometimes be bitter and strong. If you like that punchy, clear hit of the aromatic sap, you may be disappointed here, but I far prefer the subtle alchemy of Royal Oud. It's quite possibly my favorite scent for men, helped by the fact that any man wearing this would have to be quite well-heeled to afford it. Don't leave it all to the men though - this is feminine and mysterious enough to suit Freya Stark-type characters and adventuresome sophisticates spot on.

(Creed kindly sent me a sample for consideration)

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