Acqua Originale - Asian Green Tea Creed 2014

As a child, I never really understood what this "between the years" was supposed to mean. Is the year over after Christmas and one finds oneself in a time-less space? That can't be. The older I got, the more I saw these days between Christmas and New Year's Eve as exactly that: between the years. You do things that have been left undone all year, sum up the old and make plans for the new.

I've prescribed myself a little YouTube break for between the years, I'm cleaning out drawers and closets, I'm writing to all the friends I haven't checked in with in far too long, and I'm carrying out a new tradition I've been practicing for the past 2 years: Magick card sorting. The nerds among you may know what I'm talking about. For all muggles: It's a trading card game, which has its beginnings in the 90s. In the meantime countless editions have been released (3 - 4 per year). The cards depict all kinds of fantasy creatures, humans, animals, undead, plants and also undead plants and the most sought-after card from the very first edition, the black lotus, is now traded for an incredible $42,000. Of course, I do not own this card (yet), but my most valuable, the Lion's Eye Diamond brings it to 250€.

I tell you all this only to write that I have meanwhile animal back pain and googly eyes from sorting. Until the just purchased miracle package with 900 new old cards arrives, the existing 6000 have to be put in order, but in the meantime, to inspire the mind with something else, it is once again time to rip off a Creed scent.

There are a few mainstream niche brands that I'm not sure what to make of yet, Creed and Parfums de Marly being among them. For me now more commerce than art, even if the former is an old and traditional brand. Most creations of both houses could not convince me.

Asian Green Tea I fish from the bulging sample exchange package of FvSpee and must immediately and completely unsprayed lunsen on the fragrance notes. Ha, a fragrance that doesn't come off so well here and is also supposed to be a fragrance twin to my beloved Green Tea by Elizabeth Arden, from Captain Kurk's pen. So the bar is set pretty high and I spray two sprays on my forearm. My brain immediately reports a parallel to Trésor. I am confused. A dignified citrus at the beginning, which doesn't really come across as sparkling, but rather brings an almost old-fashioned, dusty touch. Behind that is something herbaceous, which scrapes sharply on the edge to celery. This vegetable, though present in extremely few fragrance pyramids, will set any perfumista's nose alarm bells ringing, as it often indicates a tilted component. The celery-like becomes tamer, but the fragrance doesn't really feel rounded to me. This absolutely coherent and creamy feeling, which the Arden fragrance conveys, is completely missing from the Creed. It seems at the beginning almost pointed or sharp, a little intangible and probably does not quite know where it wants to go. However, I give the fragrance twin suggestion with its namesake a thumbs down. While I'm voting like this, I see that 6 people have decided against Tresor as a fragrance twin and I have to smile, because there's at least one perfumo out there who recognized parallels here just like my nose. Maybe a little spray of the green tea brew could give the latest Trésor formulation back its radiant opening, which I used to hear back in the 90s when my grandma would apply the Lancome permanent.
And there, my nose catches a little whiff of green tea, phew lucky! So the fragrance, not me, because it was clear to me from the first minute that we weren't going to be too great friends, still, a fragrance should at least smell to what it says on it, so there you go, roughly. And I wonder directly whether a Viking smells like mouthwash, probably ehr after the opposite.

Back to Asia Green Tea, which is supposed to smell like so many components, which probably all bite each other in the nose and out comes a citrusy-old celery infusion with green tea aroma, but no no, you do not have to spend so much money to smell better than that. I stay then but with the much-mentioned Arden or optionally also with Yves Rocher.

Who misses, however, the good old radiant Trésor of yesteryear, should smell here times over, because the light celery at the beginning also guaranteed to create the real vintage feeling.