Another day, another fragrance as today I bring you my Creed Millesime Imperial review.
2021 saw my first foray into the house of Creed as I purchased a bottle of Creed Aventus and Creed Silver Mountain Water along with a plethora of samples that came with my order.
For some reason at the time Creed weren’t sending out samples of Creed Millesime Imperial so I hopped onto the absolutely incredible Fragrance Samples UK website and purchased a 1ml sample.
I highly recommend checking them out for all expensive / niche fragrances where you can order anything between 1ml and 10ml samples of these luxury fragrances.
Days later my 1ml sample of Creed Millesime Imperial arrived and I was ready to rock and roll!
Creed Millesime Imperial Review
So before I jump into my review let’s take a look at the notes of the fragrance as posted on the official Creed website. The notes are as follows:
Top Notes – Bergamot, Blackcurrant & Violet Leaves
Heart Notes – Orris & Marine Accord
Base Notes – Cedarwood, Musk & Sandalwood
The bottle is certainly a classy upgrade on the older bottle design of Millisime Imperial, it has a lovely smart finish to it and looks very elegant indeed.
Instantly when spraying (keep in mind I’m no perfumer or chemist) I get an instant watermelon type scent mixed with a sea salt scent. It’s very inviting and fresh and the scent feels well blended.
The only reason I mention the blending is because usually when I smell something cheap I get this stinging in my nostrils that hits me like a brick. I get a pain behind my eyes ever so slightly and usually with more expensive and more refined fragrances I never get that.
Whatever chemical is used in the cheaper fragrances certainly has my spider-sense tingling and I can quite easily give those a hard-pass in favour of these well refined formulations.
Creed has had a bad rap over the years though due to complaints of being watered down and not providing the same high quality fragrances as they used to.
I must admit that after my latest Aventus batch (which smelled quite similar to citrus furniture cleaner) and the Silver Mountain Water that stayed on my skin all of 3 hours that I’m somewhat inclined to agree about the downgrade in product quality.
Millesime Imperial lasted a solid 6 hours on my skin so as it stands it’s the best performing Creed fragrance I’ve experienced. It’s certainly a summer / warm weather fragrance.
Millesime Imperial has got a fresh inviting opening and dries down into a very intimate and sexy fragrance.
Priced at £175 for just 50ml though I’d expect nothing less but I have to give credit to another company here too.
A Middle Eastern fragrance company called ARMAF make inspired fragrances of big hitters like Creed and ARMAF Milestone an interpretation of Millisime Imperial has being doing the rounds in the fragrance community so I purchased a bottle.
Priced at £35 for 105ml Milestone not only outlasted the Creed but smelled like older batches of Millesime Imperial (some of the best they’ve made way back when).
In my personal opinion and I have to be very honest here even though this website is luxury focused, I prefer the ARMAF.
It’s a much brighter scent, lasts longer and whilst it isn’t as well-rounded in the opening the dry-down is indistinguishable to the regular Joe.
A chemist or perfumer would naturally disagree but no-one else will be able to tell the difference. It’s truly wonderful.
So whilst Millisime Imperial is the best Creed scent I’ve experienced to date I just can’t bring myself to spend five times more on something I can get for £35.
By all means make your own mind up but this is one hell of a fragrance that you must have in your collection and whilst I’d urge you to support the original creators (Creed) I wouldn’t blame you for choosing the ARMAF.
Creed Millesime Imperial Review by Sean Evans
