Oud Zarian Creed 2025

For decades the masculine side of Creed's catalogue was known for making various fresher masculine fragrances ranging from citrus aromatics and aquatics to fougères and chypres. In the last few years, we've seen Creed enter different waters, likely in an attempt to increase sales by offering products typically worn in the fall-winter seasons. This started with Delphinus and Centaurus just last year (in 2024) and Creed's latest Oud Zarian is another fragrance in that direction.

By Creed's standards, Oud Zarian is a completely different creative direction. However, relative to the broader market, this is a case of nothing new as Oud Zarian has two very clear inspirations, both from the Omani brand Amouage which also share the same perfumer. The scent opens with a sweet-spicy combination of licorice, ginger and incense with the execution falling somewhere between Amouage's Opus XIV - Royal Tobacco and Amouage's Outlands. Oud Zarian features a prominent oriental-spicy-woody base structure, predominantly smelling of incense and myrrh with the sandalwood and dare I say the oud being more prevalent in the final dry-down. I would argue that Oud Zarian is closer to Outlands in the top and the heart because of the sweetness which remains a part of the structure for the first ~2 hours. As the scent continues into the final dry-down, it does get closer to Royal Tobacco, but I wouldn't say it ever fully gets there, given Opus XIV - Royal Tobacco is built on tobacco and birch tar (which give it a more challenging nature) with no sweetness in the base.

I don't see any obvious flaws in this scent's execution and I find the multitude of accords enjoyable. I get moderate-to-strong performance with what I'd call very relevant longevity and sillage for a Creed product, initially estimating around 12 hours of longevity the sillage being strong in the top before transitioning to moderate ~2 hours in. An underwhelming part about Oud Zarian is the pricing: we are talking €495/100ml retail which is above both Outlands (€420/100ml) and Opus XIV - Royal Tobacco (€365/100ml). We're still early on in this scent's life cycle, so there's a chance this will get to 50% of retail in the grey market, but in September 2025, I am still seeing Outlands hold strong at around €320-340 while Royal Tobacco has been somewhat cheap for a while in the €180-200 area. That means I'd rate the value on the poorer end.

All-in-all, Oud Zarian doesn't really bring much value to the market with Outlands being a superior product and Opus XIV - Royal Tobacco being a more complex alternative. Instead, Oud Zarian is yet another example of a house (i.e. Creed) hiring a perfumer (i.e. C. Zarokian) to create something very similar to the same perfumer's past products. While we've recently had more egregious examples of this (see: Dominique Ropion copying Vanagloria to make YSL's Babycat and Penhaligon's Eau the Audacity), it nonetheless can't leave a good taste in your mouth, knowing this is yet another anti-consumer creative direction about to kick into 5th gear.