# Crabtree & Evelyn — Florentine Freesia Flower Water

> Florentine Freesia Flower Water is a 2013 limited-edition floral-fruity "flower water" at eau de cologne strength, part of Crabtree & Evelyn's seven-piece Heritage Collection marking the brand's 40th 

## Essence
Florentine Freesia Flower Water is a 2013 limited-edition floral-fruity "flower water" at eau de cologne strength, part of Crabtree & Evelyn's seven-piece Heritage Collection marking the brand's 40th anniversary. It is the "Renaissance Florence" chapter of a Mediterranean travel concept: a freesia-led green floral over pear, orange, and a soft warm amber. It is a light, pretty, mall-tier composition that was never meant to be a statement perfume — and, with the line limited from the start and the brand's fragrance retail collapsing later in the decade, it is now a discontinued curiosity for the secondary market.

## Scent Profile
The opening is freesia brightened by juicy pear and a wash of orange — a fresh, slightly fruity floral that is meant to read like cut stems and clean spring air rather than anything rich or sweet. This is the divisive moment: the freesia note has no usable natural extract and is reconstructed synthetically, so where it lands varies sharply from one wearer to the next.

Into the heart, lily-of-the-valley (muguet), green notes, and watery cyclamen carry the floral forward, keeping it dewy and transparent. On many people this is a pleasant, undemanding green-floral cloud; on others the freesia reconstruction reads off, turning bitter or "milky" rather than crisp.

The drydown softens into jasmine, amber, and musk, with a noticeable warm "golden" amber cast that gives the late wear more weight than the airy top would suggest — enough that some find it leans toward late summer and early autumn rather than pure spring. Overall it stays light and close to a flower-water style throughout.

## Performance
This is a flower water, and it performs like one: modest longevity and gentle sillage, sitting among the lighter performers in its category. Individual experience varies — some wearers report around six hours and a fair amount of sillage in a classic Italian cologne style, while others find it fades quickly. Treat it as a splash-style scent for casual refreshment and expect to reapply across a full day.

## Wearing Context
It suits spring and summer daytime best — casual, undemanding, refreshing-after-shower wear — and the warm amber base makes a reasonable case for late August and September as well. It reads feminine, pretty, and uncomplicated, and its lightness makes it office-friendly on wearers it agrees with.

## Comparisons & DNA
- Diptyque Ofrésia is the modern realistic-freesia benchmark and, like this one, is built on a synthetic reconstruction of the note — a cleaner, more focused soliflore to compare against.
- Jo Malone English Pear & Freesia shares the exact pear-and-freesia pairing and is the more polished, better-known reference for that idea.
- Within the house, Old World Jasmine and Venetian Violet are its 2013 Flower Water siblings — same format, same travel concept, different floral lead.
- The earlier, discontinued Crabtree & Evelyn Freesia shows the brand's longer history of soft, slightly old-fashioned florals in this vein.

## Reception
There is too little documented coverage for a firm consensus, and reaction to the scent is unusually split. The recurring criticisms are that the freesia is hard to detect or reads off ("couldn't detect freesia," "foul," bitter), and that it can be surprisingly loud and headache-inducing in the air despite being a light flower water. Against that, a minority find it "pure and innocent" and a lovely, easy spring-summer floral. What is consistently praised is the presentation: the silvery glass in illustrated cylindrical boxes is considered genuinely collectible. As a blind buy it is low-stakes on price but genuinely risky on scent, because the freesia reconstruction does not work on every nose or skin — sampling first is the safer route.

## Versions & Reformulation
A single limited-edition composition with no known reformulation. It was released on September 15, 2013 in a 100 ml flower-water format, with smaller travel sprays (around 10 ml and 0.34 oz purse sizes) also circulating. As part of the limited Heritage Collection it was never a permanent line item.

## Acquisition Notes
The fragrance is discontinued and available on the secondary market only. Pricing is inconsistent: small travel sprays tend to be affordable, while sealed full bottles with atomizer have been listed well into three figures by optimistic sellers, with the collectible packaging supporting higher asking prices on never-opened examples. Given its age, used bottles are worth checking for turned or oxidized juice.

## Notable Facts & Lore
- It is the "Renaissance Florence" entry in the 2013 Heritage Collection, a seven-piece set built around a Mediterranean and European-cities travel theme.
- Freesia yields no usable natural extract, so the lead note is entirely a synthetic reconstruction — a likely reason wearers disagree so sharply on whether it smells like freesia at all.
- Despite its very English image, Crabtree & Evelyn is American in origin, founded in 1971/72 in Cambridge, Massachusetts by Janus Films co-founder Cyrus Harvey as "The Soap Box."
- The marketing tied freesia to Renaissance Florence and, somewhat loosely, described it in terms of "white iris."
- The Heritage Collection leaned on founder Cy Harvey's ethos "to explore everything and keep the best," with "fragrance architects" framed as sourcing Mediterranean materials.
- The brand's later collapse as a fragrance retailer — a 2018 retail wind-down, a brief 2019 online-only relaunch, and the US site going dormant in 2022 — is why this and most C&E scents are now orphaned discontinuations.