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It’s not entirely true that Jean-Christophe Herault and I got along perfectly well during our several hours of Zoom-chatting. At one point, I raised the issue that Aventus fans most decry: the inconsistency of one batch to the next – the way one version smells fruitier than the bottles released just a month earlier, that some are smokier than others, that some seem to be pineapple bombs without much backing from the other ingredients, the well-roundedness of the redder batches, the ones
with more noticeable apple, gone – a pineapple lopsidedness in its place.
As Jean-Christophe Herault formulated Aventus, one would think he’d know better than anyone whether batch variation was real instead of imagined on the part of Aventus fans, whether it was the result of quality control issues or formula modifications (either to save money or to comply with changing industry bans on certain materials due to their ability to trigger skin allergies over time).
But Herault gave the stock Creed answer, the one its devotees find least likely for very good reasons (to be relayed below): That the variation was
entirely due to the high number of naturals in the formula, that their cultivation year-to-year gave them a slightly different smell, as terroir alters
a wine depending on the weather across a growing season. Some year, the wine is super good, sometimes it’s more fruity, sometimes it’s more woody, sometimes, it’s less good,” Herault told me.
But the key was what he said next: that the materials used to give the fragrance a smoky effect are especially sensitive to climate.
“If you have a different quality of this ingredient,” he added, “it can change a little bit the perfume.”
I nodded.
“But I know very well Olivier Creed,” Herault told me. “This guy puts a lot of money in his perfume. It’s not bullshit at all.”
“No one would know more than you,” I replied, no sarcasm intended at all.

Except that months later, I realized there was indeed a group of people who would know better than Herault – the scent pirates of Dubai whose gas
chromatographic breakdowns of Aventus batches (enacted so they can build it back up but now as a clone – classic perfume reverse-engineering) had
revealed that in fact different batches of Aventus actually did reflect slightly altered compositions.
Which doesn’t mean Olivier spent less on any given batch – just that, behind the creator’s back, Olivier had hired someone with the chemical competency to alter the formula, for whatever reason.
Could the scent-pirates have been lying to me? Perhaps. But that’s what you learn quickly about the Dubai fragrance market. The pirates often know
the work better even than its originator.
In this case, that would mean Olivier had, over the years, hired perfumers surreptitiously to tweak Herault’s masterpiece without even letting the creator – let alone consumers – know.

Not a kind thing to do on many levels, though it wouldn’t make Olivier the first fragrance macher guilty of such surreptitious switcheroos – in fact,
the industry has a notorious history of messing with juices on the down. Still, Olivier and Herault were no participants in a major, sterile corporate deal; theirs was a very intimate and personal relationship (or
should have been based on the absolute lack of intermediaries).
“I’m sure Olivier respects his clients and the customers who buy Aventus,” Herault said to me. “If there is anything different, it’s because there are a lot of natural products in big amounts.”
Not according to one of my sources, who says chemical breakdowns of various batches yield highly different results: Some have a greater pepper
accord (materials whose sum effect is peppery, even if none by itself is), others more blackcurrant, and still others with far less patchouli than Herault envisioned in his formula.
Unbeknownst to him – and completely behind his back, if his professed naivete/ignorance is to be believed – Herault’s master formula was subject
to constant tinkering – a treacherous and inartful interference artists in other fields would simply never abide.
(Although Herault perhaps should have realized all this sooner, ethics aside: by 2020, a newly-hired member of Creed’s staff, one Chloe da Rocha, was already including in her LinkedIn profile her role in the“reformulation of perfume concentrates according to the differentt regulations ").