MAKE YOUE OWN! The following may help.
All authentic CREED fragrances are made by hand by sixth-generation master perfumer Olivier CREED, his son, Erwin, and a team of just 35 people working in a single location in the French countryside. Messrs. CREED design and compose CREED fragrances entirely themselves. The role of their staff is to bottle and ship the products of Messrs. CREED.
The small CREED team works in what resembles a collection of country houses near one another in the woods. The rustic buildings house the studio of Messrs. CREED, their offices, cold and warm storage, as needed, for natural ingredients from around the world and large rooms with vats for the blending and later, bottling, of fragrance.
When Olivier CREED starts to create a new fragrance, acting he wears only that fragrance, day in and day out, as a key part of the creative process. He and his son discuss the fragrant composition, adding a note here, subtracting one there, calling upon a worldwide and long-established network of farmers and growers who supply CREED needed ingredients that range from bergamot to sandalwood. CREED fathers and sons have worked this way since 1760.
Even today, CREED has no fragrance production schedules, no timetable of fragrance launches, no scientists or laboratories creating fragrance, no test marketing and no consumer focus groups — all of which are very common elements of the global fragrance industry in 2010.
Messrs. CREED travel the world together to personally inspect ingredients they buy for perfume, trekking from the forests of Mysore, India — inaccessible by air but the source of undeniably the best sandalwood — to Bulgaria for roses rich with exquisite, fragrant oil. Wherever they go, the CREEDs buy in accordance with local rules that ensure sustainability of crops.
After the natural components are shipped to the CREED workshop in France, CREED father and son use methods of hand manufacture such as maceration (a warm alcohol soak that releases the inner essence of an ingredient) and infusion by hand that date to the company’s founding in 1760. In 2010, some people may wonder what drives this loyalty to ancient methods.
The CREEDs are much like a Savile Row tailor who personally travels to the Isle of Harris to buy the best hand-made tweed to make a client’s jacket. The tailor then cuts and sews the tweed by hand in his shop, following methods passed down generations, creating a product that is of unsurpassed quality and uncommonly enduring in an age of mass production. CREED shares this motivation to preserve and extend excellence into 21st century.
But unlike a suit or jacket, the point at which a fragrance is complete and ready for the client is entirely a subjective decision. Only Olivier CREED decides. If inspiration, creativity, the best materials and the fulfillment of his vision come together quickly through hard work, then a fragrance comes to market very soon after.
However if Mr. CREED feels he wants to refine the creation over a period of months — or years — he does so. CREED once went five years before releasing a new women’s fragrance, waiting until Mr. CREED felt the new blend was perfect for his discerning clientele. Few companies today have the freedom to make such decisions guided only by artistry and quality, not commerce.
CREED is exceptional, a family business now in its 250th year, passed from father to son in an unbroken line since 1760, enjoying splendid service to a clientele of great individuals, public and private, all around the globe. Using centuries old methods, CREED is nonetheless an innovator, presenting fine fragrances for men and women that find new ways to add to the beauty of daily life.