Creed

Creed makes fragrances. Very expensive ones. They are expensive for two reasons. First, of course, is that they have established themselves as a well-known luxury brand and can charge accordingly. Second is that they don't make their fragrances like most of the fragrances on the market. They use the traditional fragrance-making infusion technique, and their ingredients are all-natural. If a scent reminds you of tobacco or roses, it's probably because it contains tobacco or roses, not something artificial cooked up in a lab. Most other fragrance-makers don't do this anymore because of the expense involved and because it isn't conducive to mass-production. And it makes a difference -- at least, I think that it does. Mass-market fragrances tend to change significantly when they come in contact with the skin, and the intensity of their scents degrades rapidly with time. Not so with Creed fragrances. Every fragrance will react to the skin to some extent; but the Creed fragrances that I have tried don't change much from the bottle to the skin, and their intensity degrades very s-l-o-w-l-y. I have used Bois du Portugal before, but my current Creed scent is Vintage Tabarome (not Tabarome Millesime!). It dates to 1875 and was a favorite of Winston Churchill. For good reason, too: its heavy tobacco overtones would have matched with Churchill's ubiquitous cigars. There is nothing unisex about this fragrance. It is purely masculine, beyond any shadow of a doubt. It's all tobacco and leather. I like it very much. It only comes in a giant 8.4 ounce bottle that you have to decant into an atomizer, but that's not really a terrible hassle. It's also horribly expensive, but consider this: I have had my bottle for two years, and I've used maybe a quarter of it. Broken down on a cost-per-use basis, it's not really that bad.

(The picture above is for Creed's new Virgin Island Water fragrance. Unlike Vintage Tabarome, it is unisex, citrusy thing. I probably wouldn't like it at all.)