Creature

A fragrance with distinct stages and pretty good note separation. The quality of materials is fairly high. Despite that, Creature opens with an unpleasant accord of naked wintergreen (more likely spearmint) oil, and for about fifteen minutes it smells like toothpaste. I had someone smell it on me, and her immediate reaction was, "antiseptic." There's little doubt that this is an unsuccessful top note, although if you like the smell of Aquafresh, Creature might be up your alley. About thirty minutes into the drydown the woodier notes emerge, and Creature improves. Cedar and birch jump out at me first, and the greenness of the mint transitions into a subtle tea note, which smells very nice. I detect a small amount of patchouli upholding these elements, which balances them very well. Fairly rapidly thereafter the fragrance's woody notes recede, and the tea strengthens, along with violet leaf (the watery variety, not the peppery-metallic kind). The violet leaf seems to bolster the tea note, making it feel like the primary note. Next there's an emergence of fir notes, presumably the cypress and perhaps a bit of the oakmoss. We're going from tea and violet leaf to cypress and moss in all of ten minutes - there seems to be high volatility here. Still, the tea hangs in, now more in the background. In the base is a piney moss, very demure and green. There's signs the patchouli oil is still at work also, and again, that helps the balance, keeping Creature from becoming too monochrome. It's an interesting, skillful trajectory, marred only by an unpleasant attempt at mint on top. I can't see paying Kerosene's prices for a bottle of this (feels more like an $80 perfume to me), and it's not as though there is anything happening here that you can't get from something like Jazz by YSL, or Tsar by VC&A, or even Polo by RL. From its early heart phase to its drydown, Creature feels like a high quality designer perfume with a novel approach to the woody-green aromatic genre, especially with its use of sage and hedione (the aforementioned fragrances are great company to be in). Knowing what I know about John Pegg and the fact that he is a self-taught perfumer, it's puzzling to think that no one winced and said "toothpaste" when they smelled the first few minutes of his final draft of Creature. But maybe I just don't get that top note. Perhaps it was meant to be edgy. In any event, I don't like it, I don't think it smells good, but this is a fragrance well worth trying.

The opening of this aptly named creation, Kerosene Creature, offers a big blast of unmistakeable wintergreen. It's not spearmint; it's not peppermint. It's wintergreen, as in wintergreen Lifesavers! Shortly thereafter the truth emerges: a green reptilic creature inhabiting a swamp has been trying to mask his bad breath with wintergreen Lifesavers! Once they wear off, all that's left is the dark green scent of the swamp in which he lives. His hot, humid breath is suffused with the scent of damp moss, mushrooms, and soggy wood. Probably this is a composition which works on some people's skin. I do not number among them. By the drydown, I smell a scent empirically indistinguishable from mildew. Désolée.

This gets disliked by the majority and I am with them. Big huge mint opening with enormous sillage greatly dies down within an hour to a skin scent. A few other notes are mixed in but it's primarily mint/menthol. The best mint scent IMO is Dirty by Lush. I would guess for those that say it lasts over 12 hours and has enormous sillage most likely washed it off within 30 minutes. It's a skin scent after the 1st hour or so but does lasts a few more hours after that and sillage is soft. The standouts for me from Kerosene are Fields of Rubus and Copper Skies but kudos for Mr. Pegg going all out and trying new things.

Wow, this is mouthwash indeed, probably the mintiest scent I've tried ever, but unfortunately not wearable or likable for me at all. So basically what I get from the opening is pure mouthwash smell, very medical, fresh and boozy. I did wait for a while before washing this off for something else to appear, but unfortunately for me - the same situation as with the previous reviewer, it does not get away from smelling like a mouthwash. And why would I want my skin to smell like this?

Since I already love Black Vines, and I like Fields of Rubus, I thought I would like Creature, too, but I was wrong. Creature isn’t bad, it just smells flat, and empty, and doesn’t seem to breathe. It reminds me of a child’s cold, plastic toy. Yes, a toy “creature”, made from scented, lime-green neon plastic. I can’t imagine an adult paying a very adult price for this.