Creed Carmina

You can buy the genuine Creed Carmina straight from Creed. The real bottle comes first; the accessible alternatives below are there if you'd rather spend less.

Creed Carmina opens with Cherry, Saffron and Pink Pepper; a heart of Rose, Violet, Cashmeran and Peony; drying down to Incense, Myrrh, Amber and Musk, from notes Creed Boutique (official) publishes. Those notes read as fruity, floral, spicy, amber, woody, musky, the coarse families Creed Boutique (official) cites. How it wears depends on your skin and the concentration. We only publish notes and accords we can trace to a source.

The genuine Creed Carmina runs £175 at Creed as of this page's last update, though retailers set their own prices and change them; a real 5ml sample is $8.99.

We rank the "smells-like" alternatives to Carmina by how closely their cited accords match the original, cheapest first. A dupe is meant to evoke Carmina, not match its formula, and we say as much. If we can't verify a genuine match yet, we leave it off.

Creed Carmina is listed as a women's fragrance by the retailer. That's a marketing label, not a rule: fragrance has no gender, and plenty of "women's" scents are worn by anyone. We show how it's sold and leave the wearing to you.

Afnan Supremacy Pink (shares Peony, Violet, Pink Pepper); Rasasi Hawas London (shares Saffron, Incense, Pink Pepper); Lattafa Asad Elixir (shares Cashmeran, Saffron, Incense). These share specific notes with Carmina, a closer match than a shared accord family. We rank them by how many of Carmina's cited notes they actually share, weighting rarer notes heavier than ubiquitous ones. Each is its own fragrance with real, sourced notes, not a copy of Carmina, and has its own page.

Carmina reads as fruity, floral, spicy, amber, woody, musky. If that's the corner you like, you'll find Mancera Aqua Wood, Versace Dylan Blue and Rasasi Hawas Kobra nearby. We rank them by how many of Carmina's cited accords they actually share, weighting rarer families heavier. They're their own fragrances, not copies of Carmina, and each has its own page.