Mercedes-Benz — Mercedes-Benz Select
Essence
Mercedes-Benz Select (2018) is a budget designer “freshie” from a non-fragrance house - the automotive marque’s fragrances are produced under license by INCC Parfums (Cresp himself told documented coverage: “We were briefed by INCC. The owner of the company said that he wanted five interpretations of fougere by five master perfumers”) - composed by the prolific Olivier Cresp. It is a fruity-fresh woody-chypre built, by Cresp’s own design, around an unusual hero material: blackcurrant (cassis). It is best understood as the daytime cornerstone of the Select sub-line, which later spawned Select Night (2019, a Tom Ford Noir Extreme-adjacent sweet-spicy oriental) and Select Day (2020, an aquatic). Critical coverage from major-source perfume writers is essentially nonexistent; this is a fragrance whose entire documented life lives in wear reports, documented coverage, documented coverage, and YouTube. The honest framing: a competent, affordable, mass-appeal fresh scent that the enthusiast wearers overwhelmingly files under one heading - an Aventus alternative.
Scent Profile
Select opens bright and fizzy: bergamot and a prominent, juicy blackcurrant, cooled by a crisp mint-and-apple heart, drying down to the contemporary trinity of ambroxan, musk, and patchouli. Cresp deliberately foregrounded the cassis; in documented coverage editor Miguel Matos’s launch feature (“Mercedes-Benz Select: A Different Juice for Men”) he is quoted: “Blackcurrant is never used in men’s fragrances and it’s rather interesting. It brings freshness and fizziness.” The apple, per the same piece, is the move that makes it “more aquatic… very familiar to the masculine audience,” echoing the Hugo Boss Bottled lineage. The base is an ambroxan-forward clean woody-musk. wearers noses split on execution: many get a pleasant “fresh, fruity, modern” citrus-cassis; a minority get something “dark and bitter… dark chocolate with tons of wood,” or, less kindly, a dusty drydown - “I feel like I smell like pure dust when the fragrance is 3hrs old.”
Performance
This is the fragrance’s Achilles’ heel and its most consistent complaint. Reports range wildly but cluster toward weak: “smells great for the first 20 minutes, then it disappears like a magic act”; “you get 30 minutes of half decent projection and it’s gone”; “doesn’t last one bit.” wearers pool lands at roughly qualitatively strong longevity and qualitatively strong sillage - middling, not strong. A subset of users report better results (one notes a 2019 batch “beats any batch of Aventus from 2019 onwards” on performance), and the standalone documented coverage line “I guess my batch is different” appears as a direct rebuttal to the dominant weak-performance reviews - suggesting genuine batch inconsistency rather than a single fixed profile. Bottom line: treat it as a 3-6 hour scent that may need reapplication.
Wearing Context
A spring/summer, daytime, casual workhorse: office, gym, errands, warm-weather wear. Reviewers call it clean, modern, easy, and inoffensive - “an excellent everyday signature” for someone who wants Aventus-style fruity freshness on a tight budget. Its weak projection, often a liability, is reframed by some as an asset for close-quarters/office settings. Not a cold-weather or evening statement scent; that role in the line falls to Select Night.
Comparisons & DNA
wearers verdict is remarkably unanimous: Mercedes-Benz Select is a Creed Aventus alternative, specifically “Aventus without the pineapple.” A documented coverage thread is literally titled “Mercedes Benz Select - the new aventus clone?”; members there describe it as “Aventus without the Pineapple… mostly synthetic fruity” and “an Aventus clone sans the pineapple but with a chunky blackcurrant presence.” wearers concur - “a somehow ‘younger’ Aventus, more fruitier and less mature”; “freshly sprayed, it smells like the 20-mins dry-down of Aventus.” It is cross-shopped with the other famous Aventus DNA pieces: Montblanc Explorer and Armaf Club de Nuit Intense Man. A dissenting minority hears Terre d’Hermes instead, and some flag a faint Invictus/Azzaro Wanted “bubblegum” facet. There is also the much-cited claim that it strongly resembles Mercedes-Benz’s own earlier Mercedes-Benz Intense (2013) “but with a little bit of mintiness.”
Reception
Among enthusiasts, reception is “good value, shame about the performance.” The scent itself is generally liked-to-praised (wearers scent rating ~qualitatively strong; “great quality, bright, smooth”; “a great buy… relatively cheap”), while longevity drags the overall impression down and the Aventus-clone framing caps its perceived originality (“726,535th clone of Aventus”). documented coverage’s own Miguel Matos wrote a genuinely positive launch feature celebrating the blackcurrant concept. There is no major-source critical record - no Luca Turin/Tania Sanchez Guide entry, no Bois de Jasmin, Now Smell This, Colognoisseur, or Persolaise review was located. The only “interview” content is a marketing-oriented Scentbird Q&A with Cresp. Treat the YouTube/influencer enthusiasm (where it’s a popular budget-clone recommendation) as sentiment signal only.
Versions & Reformulation
No formal reformulation has been announced, but batch-to-batch variation is documented by wearers: reviewers report the liquid has appeared in different tints (a “clear-green” in recent batches, occasionally “clear-violet”), and performance comparisons across batch years are common, with some claiming older (e.g., 2019) batches perform better. The “I guess my batch is different” review crystallizes this inconsistency. As of mid-2025 the fragrance is not confirmed discontinued - it remains on the official Mercedes-Benz Parfums site and is abundantly stocked at discounters, with available data updated through July 2025 showing it active. (Note: discontinuation chatter online usually concerns the separate Mercedes-Benz Club line, not Select.)
Acquisition Notes
A budget blind-buy par excellence: standard size is 100ml/3.4oz EDT (a 50ml also exists historically; a 120ml size could not be confirmed). Street prices are low - documented coverage’s tracker has shown items from ~$11 at FragranceNet and ~$10-34 at Jomashop, against a ~$110 Macy’s MSRP; one wearers pegged it at “€30-45/100ml… a bargain at this price.” Given the weak/variable longevity, buy the affordable large bottle expecting to over-apply, and if performance matters, batch-checking may be worthwhile. There is no quality reason to pay near full MSRP when discounters carry it for a fraction.
Notable Facts & Lore
- The defining “lore” is Cresp’s blackcurrant gambit and his account of the project’s hard part: in a conversation at the Select launch party in Cannes, Cresp reportedly said the main composition came easily in terms of personality, “but the hard part was to give it volume and sillage” - an unintentionally telling admission given the fragrance’s chief criticism.
- Cresp framed the brief as returning “to the essence of a masculine fragrance,” starting “from a masculine woody chypre structure… shaped with a very modern and vibrant freshness,” and singled out ambroxan (“Ambrox”) as the molecule that “makes this fragrance unforgettable and contemporary.
- “ The wider curiosity is simply the category: a luxury carmaker outsourcing to a master perfumer (Firmenich/Cresp) to produce a sub-$40 Aventus alternative - and the enthusiast wearers embracing it precisely on those terms.