# Crabtree & Evelyn — Venetian Violet Flower Water > Venetian Violet Flower Water is a discontinued 2013 Crabtree & Evelyn violet built for grace and ease rather than drama. It reads as a fruity-powdery violet in a "flower water" style — airy enough to ## Essence Venetian Violet Flower Water is a discontinued 2013 Crabtree & Evelyn violet built for grace and ease rather than drama. It reads as a fruity-powdery violet in a "flower water" style — airy enough to feel polished, never heavy. The useful frame is a friendly, wearable violet for people who do not want lipstick density, candy overload, or dark cosmetic powder. Its charm is restraint, and its limits live in the same place. ## Scent Profile The opening is a bright fruit basket: raspberry, lychee, and mandarin, onto which the violet settles almost immediately. The fruit is fresh rather than candied, and the violet arrives as the clear center of the composition rather than a buried accent. Through the heart, peach and peony soften the floral middle while iris, musk, and cedar build a powdery, slightly dry, faintly woody underside that keeps the scent from turning sugary. The best image is not candied violet or green violet but fruity violet with powder and a light cedar finish. Notably, the violet here is not green — which is part of why it suits warm and cool weather more naturally than spring. The drydown drifts from fruity-powdery toward a drier floral powder. The fruit tends to fade fairly quickly, leaving a subtle woody floral-powder trace. The overall effect is closer to a delicate powdery violet with a fruity introduction than to a sustained fruity floral. ## Performance Performance is modest, entirely in keeping with the "Flower Water" label: subtle, airy, and on the short side, with wear often landing around two to three hours. The concentration feel sits somewhere between an eau de cologne and an eau de toilette. Expect a personal-radius scent with gentle persistence rather than a room-filler; apply generously if you want the violet to hold. ## Wearing Context This is a daytime fragrance by temperament — light, airy, and close. It suits spring and summer daytime wear, low-friction office use, and any situation where a civilized, intimate violet works better than a statement perfume. Because the fruit is bright and the powder soft rather than plush, it also reads well in transitional weather. It is a gentle feminine powder-fruit floral, less convincing for anyone chasing theatrical, lipstick-heavy, or vintage-weight violet. ## Comparisons & DNA - Goutal La Violette: the closest reference point — a light, natural, violet-sheer style. Venetian Violet sits in the same territory but fruitier and more powdery-soft, with lychee, raspberry, and peach more visible. - Caron Aimez-Moi: a richer, more characterful violet that violet devotees reach for instead; it shows how restrained the Crabtree & Evelyn release is by comparison. - Frederic Malle Lipstick Rose: an overtly cosmetic, lipstick-wax violet-rose — the opposite pole from this clean, fruity-powdery reading. - L'Artisan Verte Violette: a green, spring-stem violet, where Venetian Violet deliberately avoids the green facet. ## Reception For an under-documented discontinued scent, reception is fairly coherent: those who find it tend to like it. Praise centers on the natural-smelling fruity violet, the pleasant restraint, and the absence of the over-sweetness or headache factor some violet perfumes carry. Criticism comes from the same traits seen from the other side — it can read weak, watered down, one-dimensional, or simply not an impressive violet, with some newer wearers finding it too faint or unflatteringly "wet." The result is a narrow blind-buy case: sensible mainly for someone who specifically wants understated fruity violet. ## Versions & Reformulation Venetian Violet Flower Water was part of Crabtree & Evelyn's limited 2013 Heritage collection, alongside other Flower Waters and Mediterranean-themed eaux de cologne. The Flower Water bottles were 100 ml silvered glass. There is no documented evidence of any reformulation. ## Acquisition Notes This is a discontinued Heritage-era bottle, so accuracy of identification matters more than price. Expect to find it on the secondary market in its 100 ml silvered bottle. Because Crabtree & Evelyn also released a separate, simpler Violet fragrance in 1988, verify that a listing is specifically for Venetian Violet Flower Water rather than the older "Violet." No reliable counterfeit or batch-code guidance is established. ## Notable Facts & Lore - Released in 2013 as one of three women's Flower Waters in Crabtree & Evelyn's limited Heritage collection. - The collection marked the house's fortieth anniversary. - It was framed around an imagined journey through Mediterranean and historic European cities. - The Flower Water editions came in distinctive 100 ml silvered-glass bottles. - A separate, simpler Crabtree & Evelyn Violet (1988) predates it and is easy to confuse on the secondary market.