Let me tell you something – no matter how rich you are, no matter how much stuff you can afford, no matter how successful you become – there is no better feeling than a completely random, awesome surprise that you aren’t expecting that comes from nowhere out of left field! It’s the grown-up equivalent of Christmas for kids. That’s pretty much how I felt today when I was sent a bottle of Creed Royal-Oud a couple of months before it even launches in the United States.
[mainbodyad]A few weeks ago, the Creed distributor in North America sent me a sample of the new Royal-Oud that is going to be released this August (pre-orders begin in July at the Creed Boutique). I was crazy about it and wrote one of the most glowing reviews of any of the fragrances in my collection. Within a moment, the Creed Royal Oud skyrocketed to among my favorite fragrances, along with Hanae Mori for men, Creed Green Irish Tweed, Creed Aventus, Creed Original Santal, Amouage Jubilation XXV, Bond No. 9 Great Jones, etc. My affection for it has only grown as I carefully dolled out tiny drops from the sample I was sent until I could go to my favorite department store and buy my own bottle on the release date.
This morning, a FedEx package arrives with the regular business shipments and Aaron walks in with a smile on his face. (He’s as crazy about the new Royal-Oud as I am.) He pulled out the bottle and it took a second for me to process what I was seeing. The distributor had sent me a bottle of the Royal-Oud as a “thank you” for my enthusiastic support of the brand.
I unpackaged the box, and started spraying everything and everyone. Later in the afternoon, I took out some glass vials that we keep in the fragrance cabinet I have in my master closet at home and made samples for friends and family, giving them out to those who I know enjoy this sort of thing. My grandmother even made a special trip just to pick up hers so she could wear it for the week and decide whether to get a bottle for herself.
At some point, I’m going to have to post an update on my fragrance collection because the Creed bottles alone have nearly doubled in number since September 17th, 2010. That was only 8 months ago tomorrow. Plus, I have several dozen samples coming in from some of the niche houses around the world that I am hoping to get to in the next few weeks. They weren’t easy to obtain but I imagine the fragrance collectors who read the blog will be interested to learn about them.
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