Crabtree & Evelyn — Venetian Violet Flower Water
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.