Item Description
Love in Black is an interesting fragrance. For a Creed, it has perfume level strength and longevity, comparable to the potency of other houses. I've read that this one is more unisex and wearable for men than its counterpart, Love in White, and I concur with that assessment; Love in Black is definitely unisex.
The top is an explosion of iris - my least favorite part of the scent by far. Creed seems to have some issues with its top notes for me, and Love in Black doesn't make me want to buy a bottle after five minutes. The iris is so amplified, so doughy, that it smells like semi-sweetened Play-Doh. Fortunately, this doesn't last, although oddly, on my skin, it maintains this intensity for the better part of 20 minutes. Gradually from there, it begins to transition into cedar-infused violet and rose accords. The flowers literally bloom on skin, sweet, dark, and deep. From there, things stay pretty floral and linear for an hour, until something very interesting happens - Love in Black enters a second life.
Somewhere in that later stage, a super-sweet cotton candy-esque note explodes forward, but only for about five minutes, at which point a prominent black currant takes over. The currant rejoins the cedar and violets, and everything is firmly centered again. However, I felt I was wearing a different fragrance, one with a fruity element that was nowhere to be found in earlier stages of this Creed.
It's hard to say that Love in Black is synthetic rubbish, but I will concede that for some people, this may smell like just that. The caveat to the beauty of it is in its "perfumey" nature - this carries on air, and treats the nose with the same aggression found in classics like No. 5 and Fendi Donna. If it weren't for the iris, I would say it is blatantly feminine, but as it stands, there is something ambiguous here. Give this one a try, the packaging, complexity, staying power, and scent are well worth it.
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The top is an explosion of iris - my least favorite part of the scent by far. Creed seems to have some issues with its top notes for me, and Love in Black doesn't make me want to buy a bottle after five minutes. The iris is so amplified, so doughy, that it smells like semi-sweetened Play-Doh. Fortunately, this doesn't last, although oddly, on my skin, it maintains this intensity for the better part of 20 minutes. Gradually from there, it begins to transition into cedar-infused violet and rose accords. The flowers literally bloom on skin, sweet, dark, and deep. From there, things stay pretty floral and linear for an hour, until something very interesting happens - Love in Black enters a second life.
Somewhere in that later stage, a super-sweet cotton candy-esque note explodes forward, but only for about five minutes, at which point a prominent black currant takes over. The currant rejoins the cedar and violets, and everything is firmly centered again. However, I felt I was wearing a different fragrance, one with a fruity element that was nowhere to be found in earlier stages of this Creed.
It's hard to say that Love in Black is synthetic rubbish, but I will concede that for some people, this may smell like just that. The caveat to the beauty of it is in its "perfumey" nature - this carries on air, and treats the nose with the same aggression found in classics like No. 5 and Fendi Donna. If it weren't for the iris, I would say it is blatantly feminine, but as it stands, there is something ambiguous here. Give this one a try, the packaging, complexity, staying power, and scent are well worth it.
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