Crabtree & Evelyn — India Hicks Island Living - Spider Lily
Essence
Spider Lily is the signature eau de toilette of Crabtree & Evelyn’s 2007 “India Hicks Island Living” collection, a body-and-home line co-created with model, designer and author India Hicks. It is a tropical, fresh floral-fruity built to evoke Hicks’s Bahamian island life: citrus and orange blossom over the white spider lily she names her favorite island flower, set against tropical fruit, green palm and a sea-air accord. Discontinued and later effectively reborn under a new name, it keeps a small but affectionate following as a breezy, warm-weather “vacation in a bottle.”
Scent Profile
The opening is citrus and orange — a quick, sunny lift of fruit brightness before the florals arrive. Brand and collection materials round this out with tropical fruits and a sea-air accord, so the first impression can read either as crisp citrus or as a juicier, fruitier tropical wash depending on skin. The heart is the spider lily, an unusual tropical white floral, sitting alongside orange blossom and a whisper of night-blooming jasmine. Here the lily reads airy and fresh rather than as a heady hothouse flower, giving a clean white-floral core threaded with green palm. Some wearers get a delicate, transparent bouquet; others find the fruit pushes forward into something warmer and more candied, occasionally enough to bury the florals without a little layering. The drydown is loosely described as spicy, but the effect is soft and warm rather than dark — a gentle spice that keeps the florals sunny as the citrus burns off. Overall this is a light, fresh, citrus-tropical-floral that wears close to the skin, with the fruit-to-floral balance shifting from one wearer to the next.
Performance
This wears as a modest, intimate fragrance typical of a fresh tropical EDT from a body-care house. Longevity reports run light and short-lived, with sillage decent up close but quick to settle; a few wearers found it lasted well enough for the office, but most treat it as a daytime summer refresher. It rewards generous application, and the brand’s intended longevity strategy — layering with the matching body cream and lotion from the Island Living range — is echoed by wearers who want it to stick around.
Wearing Context
This is a summer and warm-climate daytime scent first and foremost, the kind of thing wearers tie to beaches, islands and long relaxing days. It is fresh, easy and broadly likable, leaning feminine and breezy, and works for casual outdoor wear with enough lift for a relaxed cocktail-party mood. It would feel slight in cold weather or in formal winter settings.
Comparisons & DNA
- Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue is the most common reference point, though a contested one: some read the drydown as a paler shade of Light Blue, while devotees insist Spider Lily is more feminine and tropical and smells nothing like it.
- Caribbean Island Wild Flowers is the single most important comparison, because it is Spider Lily’s own successor — relaunched in 2014 as effectively the same scent renamed, reported as more citrusy up top with a less complex drydown.
- Chanel Cristalle and No. 19 are invoked for the green-fresh facet that runs under the florals.
- Eau par Kenzo comes up for the bright citrus character of the opening.
Reception
Among its small following the scent is warmly remembered, carrying real nostalgia and a holy-grail, repurchase-hunting energy after discontinuation. Praise centers on its fresh, clean, tropical-island character and its evocative, mood-driven feel. The main criticism is weak longevity, with a secondary complaint that the fruit can tilt candyish and crowd out the florals for some skins. On value, wearers consistently call it surprisingly inexpensive for what it delivers; a blind buy is moot given discontinuation, but those who track down a bottle tend to be happy with it.
Versions & Reformulation
Spider Lily launched in 2007 as the lead fragrance of India Hicks Island Living, a twelve-product body-and-home collection (the other fragrance group was “Casuarina”), credited to perfumer Steven deMarcado and sold as an EDT (commonly 30 ml and 100 ml) alongside body cream, body polish, shower gel, bath salts, soap and home items. The Hicks partnership and the line were later discontinued, and in 2014 Crabtree & Evelyn relaunched the scent with the India Hicks branding removed as Caribbean Island Wild Flowers — described by the house as the same fragrance renamed, though the consensus is that it is very close but simplified and sold in a smaller bottle. The lineage runs: Spider Lily (2007, India Hicks) to Caribbean Island Wild Flowers (2014, rename and reformulation).
Acquisition Notes
This was affordable, prestige-adjacent pricing in its day — the wider Island Living line ran from roughly $18 for a hand wash to about $80 for a candle, with the EDT a mid-priced item that wearers repeatedly call a bargain for the quality. Official sizes were the 30 ml and 100 ml EDT plus the matching body-care range. Both the discontinued original and the later Caribbean Island Wild Flowers now turn up mainly secondhand, where the rename causes genuine confusion: anyone seeking the original should know the 2014 version is close but not identical and comes in a smaller bottle. The practical risk here is buying the wrong version rather than a counterfeit.
Notable Facts & Lore
- India Hicks is the granddaughter of Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India after whom she is named, and a goddaughter of King Charles III.
- She was signed as Crabtree & Evelyn’s spokeswoman in early 2006 to help reenergize the brand, and Island Living was the house’s first move into the prestige market.
- The collection debuted at Bergdorf Goodman in the US and Selfridges in the UK in spring 2007.
- Hicks based the line on her life on Harbour Island in the Bahamas and on the spider lily, which she describes as “both fragile and tenacious, growing straight out of the sand near the shore.”
- The Island Living body-care products were granted a Royal Warrant through her godfather.
- The scent’s quiet discontinuation and rename, rather than any controversy, is the main thread of its later lore.