Long Lost Crabtree & Evelyn Fragrance: Help Please {Ask The Readers}

The news is all bad. Seems you can't go home again. It was just called C & E Men's Cologne, and it was great. Have been hoping to find more of this for years. No such luck. Found some shaving soap with the scent in NYC a few years ago at a discount perfume shop on Madison Ave., and dared to hope, but they had no cologne. Can't find any on the web. I had no idea it was to be discontinued until it was far too late to act. I have half a bottle left and hide it from my son (8), who found the scented talc and could not get enough of it. Seems to me nothing they have made since is as good (Sienna, Nomad). Then last year they discontinued Almond, their best-selling soap and shaving cream fragrance. Who are these idiots? Company used to occasionally bring back a discontinued item as a gimmick, but never the men's cologne. I emailed the company about that possibility, and they simply said there were no plans to bring it back and didn't I think it was to heavy a scent for today and why didn't I like Nomad (because it stinks!)?. They have a new lime cologne. Maybe that is worth trying. If you find any for sale, please let me know. I'll do the same, here.

Posted by: Mark Hughes | November 29, 2007

I'm trying to find C & E for Men aftershave. Only thing that doesn't give me migraines. Any suggestions most appreciated.

Posted by: Francie | February 21, 2008

what you had was C&E for men's the range came in blue packaging with an orange motif
( i may even have a bar of the old soap lying around)
ever since they sold the company its moved a long ways from its single note "natural" history..to more "modern" scents.. try asking them which notes were in that old scent.. then someone can approximate it for you...

Posted by: jacob | March 4, 2008

How I wish C&E would bring back their Vetiver line! They had soap and talc.

Posted by: St Raymond | April 24, 2008

I've had the same trouble for YEARS, regarding their Devon Violet line. I LOVED that scent, especially the talc. All they keep making is variations of lavender. It's almost impossible to find violet scents in good quality toiletries. WHY?!
When we got word it was being discontinued, my sister found 5 cans of it for sale, and bought them all. I mix it with corn starch in powder bowls, but I'm down to my last half can, even though I've been SO careful with it.
I check eBay for it, but so far, no luck! Good luck to you and your quest!

Posted by: Fern Baptista | May 22, 2008

I am looking for Crabtree and Evelyn's discontinued fragrance- apricot kernal oil. Thanks

Posted by: Lynn Hopkins | June 28, 2008

I know the crabtree and evelyn men's cologne from 15 years ago. It was discontinued but I bought three bottles and still have two. It does smell great. By the way I called one time and it seems to me that Sebastian retained some of it at their lab but it may not be there now. I would love to see them put it out again.

Posted by: paul | July 11, 2008

Fern, I have three bars of the Crabtree & Evelyn Apricot Kernel Oil Soap.

I'm going to be selling them on Ebay probably. Let me know if you are interested!

Posted by: Virginia Stafford | August 1, 2008

Great site ! You are all very polite. I however am feeling less then polite. I purchased twenty plus bottles of C & E as soon as I found it was discontinued. I contacted C & E on several occasions. They are less then helpful and apparently could care less about customer satisfaction,loyalty or feedback. NOW, how do we get around their lack of enthusiasm an GET MORE ! Now !

Posted by: JEFFREY TROCHELMAN | August 4, 2008

I still miss a C&E fragrance from before Vetiver - KHUS KHUS. I loved!!! this and have never found anything like it. I wish I had kept some so I could have it copied but I did not.

I agree with you that C&E fragrances are not what they used to be.

Posted by: Liz | August 13, 2008

I too have been looking in vain for C&E Vetiver fragrance for men. I also want to echo that they seem to not care at all about what customers want.

Posted by: Bill Franklin | August 25, 2008

Hello..... I have just taken over a shop and inherited lots of discontinued C & E toiletries inc ... apricot kernel, mens cologne, gardenia, azzemour, avocado and more. How can I get them to you all???

Posted by: Jules | September 12, 2008

Jules, I just saw your message. Do you have any of C & Es Vanilla perfume. Desperate for some?

Posted by: Sandy | September 25, 2008

I am looking for C & E's Vetiver for my HoneyMan for Christmas, any suggestions? I know it has been discontinued, but help? We BOTH love it on him...

Posted by: Jo | November 11, 2008

Hi! Im looking for the C&E Spring Rain scent. Also discontinued. Any leads would be great!

Posted by: Kimberly | December 15, 2008

Jules, I'm very interested in the Azzemour and also the Apricot Kernel. Do you still have any?

Also, I'm looking for Damask Rose. It seems like everything that I've ever loved from C&E has been discontinued.

Posted by: Elynne | December 20, 2008

To Bill Franklin,
Do you still have any of the C&E men's cologne?
Jean

Posted by: Jean | December 22, 2008

DOES ANYONE HAVE THE TOUT BON SOAPS FOR SALE? I AM DESPERATELY SEARCHING FOR THEM. THANKS!!

Posted by: DEB NISSLEY | January 10, 2009

Jean, No I don't have any.

Jules, do you have any of the C&E Vetiver Colonge?

Thanks, Bill

Posted by: Bill Franklin | January 30, 2009

Am looking for long lost C&E fragrance - Violette. Bought some of the last stock from a place in Tenn. shortly after they discontinued Violette but cannot find anymore. Any suggestions?

Posted by: Julia HIckman | August 26, 2009

http://www.crabtree-evelyn.com/eng/categories/online-outlet

This seems to have alot more than most sites. I only wish they had the vanilla. I can't find it anywhere

Posted by: Andrea | November 12, 2009

I am still looking for Crabtree & Evelyn Vetiver. I got lucky on eBay a few months back and found an original C&E Sandalwood.

Bill

Posted by: Bill Franklin | March 27, 2010

Maybe they'll hear you and others too. There has been an archival movement. Many brands are going back to their archives and re-issuing old discontinued fragrances.

Posted by: Marie-Helene Wagner | March 27, 2010

Hi,
I am looking for an older fragrance called Millefleurs in a lovley pleated round bottle - probably from the 1980s, perhaps...anyone recall this item?
Thanks, Jan

Posted by: Jan | June 17, 2010

Today is Saturday, June 19, 2010. This is my first time on this site. Shocked to hear that C&E has discontinued so many gorgeous fragrance lines. I only thought there was trouble getting subtle, well-crafted, NATURAL, (non-aldehydic), old-fashioned fragrances sent from C&E London to the US Market, because of our lack of sophistication in our nasal palates. To hear so many great fragrances from C&E are discontinued is so disheartening.

It means that instead of holding the line in terms of well-crafted, traditional fragrances, they've caved into catering to the grotesquely inferior mass nasal palette of American consumers. So sad.

There are a few of us in the US that were raised on traditional, beautiful French perfumes or colognes if our mothers and/or fathers knew their stuff.

Such is the case with me. To this day I still buy my mother's favourite frangrances: Madame Rochas, Cabochard and Cabotine by Gres, Jean-Louis Scherrer, Mille by Jean Patou, Vent Vert and Miss Balmain by Balmain, Chanel 19, Diorella, First de Van Cleef et Arpels and various scents by Caron, Borghese, Worth, Nina Ricci, Orlane, Hermes - the list goes on.

My mother used to buy "Fleches" by Lancome back in the 50's. Wouldn't it be great to find that, again? Magie Noir and other more recent Lancome scents are nice, but can't compare

Jessica McClintock, Carolina Herrera, Paco Rabanne, Guy Laroche, Gucci and Fendi are comparative newcomers on this scene. I still adore Rabanne's Calandre, McClintock's Jess, Herrera's 212 and Laroche's Fiji. Also love Adolfo's original fragrance, but it seems impossible to find. The only Gucci I've ever loved was #1, and that was discontinued years ago. Some Fendi is good, (Theorema) some is way to heavy and whorish, for my taste. To me, Fendi's original fragrance smells like bug-spray, but it combines amazingly well with fruities and florals. (One good combo with Fendi's original is McClintock's original - neither of which I like in pure form, but mixed together... not bad.)

I tend to dislike Giorgio, Oscar de la Renta or Lauder perfumes, with the exception of Lauder's Youth Dew - cut with LOTS of water and worn very lightly, believe it or not - it's a lovely winter evening dab. I also used to love Lauder's Aliage - but that's a spicy, soapy and unusual sport fragrance I haven't worn since I was about 28.

Three of my newest favourites are Marc Jacob's original floral, Narcisso Rodriquez for Women and Bulgari's original Omnia in the brown bottle.

I used to keep my perfume preferences a secret - now I shout them from the mountaintops, in hopes that some 20-somethings will start wearing good perfumes and stop assaulting the rest of our noses with their infernal bug-spray perfumes.

Instead of C&E catering to people with traditional and sophisticated fragrance backgrounds like this, which I assume many of you share with me, they're catering to the new generations of consumers who think bug-spray aldehyde and galaxolide brews smell good. They only think this because the most synthetic and cheaply-made fragrances were the ones most mass produced and mass marketed, starting in the 60's, to teens and 20-somethings, who couldn't afford the real stuff. Now we have 3 generations of girls and boys who have grown up with these inferior fragrances hard-sold in marketing campaigns, in the Emperor's Clothes fashion, as being the hilt of excellence, when actually they are bilge. Because of this, we now have all of our teens and 20-somethings, as well as the majority of grown men and women in their 30's and 40's, and even many in my age group, their 50's, who actually don't know or care about the difference between traditional, natural, soft-edged perfumes and synthetic, aldehydic, sharp-edged ones.

Now that there's a generational mass-memory-loss about what a good fragrance actually smells like, the most cheaply made fragrances - the ones that are all-marketing hype and no actual excellence - can command the highest prices, even beyond the traditional perfumes that truly are expensive to make.

So, if you were a perfumer in that market scenario, what would you do? What if synthetic, cheap perfumes were commanding a higher price AND selling at a higher volume than your all-natural, expensive perfumes? Wow. That's being stuck between a rock and a hard place.

It's hard to blame fragrance companies for joining the dark side instead of holding the line of true excellence. The fact that successful, 'hype' marketing of inferior products brought about this situation is very, very sad - but, convince a fragrance company that's rolling in dough, happy to be making CHEAP, synthetic fragrances and happy to be peddling them successful to a VAST fragrance-unsavvy consumer market, to go back to making expensive perfumes for a much more limited consumer market? Not much hope of that, I'm afraid - just don't think this will ever happen - so we can just kiss those beautiful fragrances C&E USED TO make, goodbye.

Our only hope is to lay hold of old stock.

Bill Franklin, how can I get in touch with you to see what you have available? Please write me at my email, sarahs custom designs at yahoo dot com, which, of course, has no spaces.

Marie-Helene Wagner - you and I are perfume soul sisters. Millefleurs was one of my all-time favourite fragrances. I still have a low, oval box of powder and a tall cylindrical box that held the last bottle of the perfume I was ever able to find.

I used to spend hours in C&E shops, starting about 30 years ago, when I was in my early 20's.

Anyone remember the blackish-purple soap called 'Gentian Violet'? Wow, now that was spectacular, just for its unusualness.

I didn't want the scent of C&E's Gentian Violet on my skin, per se, but I used to carry a bar of the soap around with me. I'd take long inhalations of its scent throughout the day, because there was some sort of magically aroma therapeutic effect on me whenever I smelled it.

I also loved Damask Rose. There are so many rose attars out there, but Damask Rose was the best I ever encountered. Again, Rose was not a fragrance I wanted on my skin, but it was a fragrance I felt the need to smell from a vial or a cake of soap, as often as possible.

Ah, but Millefleurs. Now that was one of the few world-class, skin-worthy perfumes that C&E made - and what idiots they've been to discontinue it. I know Marie-Helen feels the sharp pangs of this loss, as I do. I know a lot of their other, older scents were lovely - like the Vetiver, the Violet, the Rose and the Apricot scents people write about here that they miss. But these are mainly single-extract scents, and can be found in essential oils available from other companies. True, blending them at home exactly like the C&E version would be hard, but one could come close. But Millefleurs was a true blend, and a world-class blend, at that. It's name suggests it was a blend of a thousand flowers, but, realistically, even if it had been only a blend of 20 or 30 flowers - still, how could any of us ever reproduce something even close to it, with our own essential oils?

One can call me and others like me fragrance-obsessed nerds - but at least this obsession has honed in us the ability to make more fine discernments about the excellence or lack of excellence in a wide variety of 'types' of fragrance.

There is not a single 'type' of fragrance that I do not like. I only dislike poorly made, poorly blended and/or synthetic perfumes - in ALL types, and I would guess that many of you on this site feel the same.

I call out to all my fellow fragrance-nerds to join me in a collective bellow of grief and mourning over the dying traditional perfume industry. Thanks for reading my rant - thanks for being amongst the dwindling collective of truly knowledgeable lovers of classic and beautifully-rendered fragrances - Sarah

Posted by: Sarah Anderson | June 19, 2010

Sarah,

Wow, I think you need to be awarded a medal for being a true and throughout perfumista! Welcome to The Scented Salamander! What a passionate comment!

It's reader Jan who enjoyed Millefleurs. I personally like Summer Hill which is still in production. I remember a Hungarian Water in a green bottle, which was discontinued. I'm totally with you on the idea that it's best in order to appreciate the world of fragrances and aromas to cultivate openness, when you say "There is not a single 'type' of fragrance that I do not like," and "I only dislike poorly made, poorly blended and/or synthetic perfumes."

But I would like to point out that there can also be a movement of improvement and progress in perfumery with compositions that are more and more sophisticated in their structures and selected materials, from a technological perspective.

Posted by: Marie-Helene Wagner | June 20, 2010

Great despair! I have only left some drops of C&E for men and each time I get a new perfum I compair it to C%E and they never reach it..
My wife thinks I am oldfashioned and should not hang on the old times...
But i can´t help!

Posted by: Heinrich from Germany | June 27, 2010

I see that C & E have a really devoted following. It would be good to know why they discontinued several of their scents.

Posted by: Marie-Helene Wagner | June 27, 2010

Hello everyone

I bring some good news for all those yearning for some nostalgia and heritage. Crabtree & Evelyn have recently launched a collection of Heritage Soaps - including: Crabapple & Mulberry, Oatmeal & Wheatgerm, Vetiver & Juniperberry [all Triple-milled soaps]; Camomile, Lime and Blackcurrant [all Swiss glycerine soaps].

As for those that liked the 'C&E for Men' fragrance I can certainly recommend 'Sienna' - one their greatly underestimated fragrances, also dating back to the 1980s. This is one I use myself.

Posted by: Vincent Noël | July 15, 2010

I read on another website that some perfumes have been discontinued because it is no longer legal to use some of the ingredients that were in them. That may be the reason some of the C&E fragrances were discontinued. That said...I too miss many of the C&E scents from the 70s and 80s, including Damask Rose, Millefleurs, Devon Violet, Chamomile, and Carnation. And the something Fern soap - Royal Fern? Ginger Fern? I think that one was intended for men, but I loved it.

Posted by: Susan | August 31, 2010

I remember when the Crabtree & Evelyn store was a bit of heaven. I think I have an old catalog in a basket under my guest bed but can't bear to look at it - too sad. All the gorgeous graphics. What I wouldn't give for a splash of Millefleurs. I would be interested to know how this company was run into the ground. Before Katrina there was a line called Southerness that I enjoyed as much - the gentleman's candle was sublime. If you find something you love, don't let it go-stock up!

Posted by: Donna | January 2, 2011

Donna,

They seem to have run into some problems from what I can see in Paris as their flagship store on boulevard St Germain closed down. They mainly conduct their business online in France it seems.

I would love myself to be able to smell their rendition of Hungarian Water which used to be housed in a nice green bottle.

Posted by: Marie-Helene Wagner | January 3, 2011

Thanks a lot Marie-Helene and everyone else,

I just bought all that ressembled the fragrances I used back then (1987-1995)...

I remember Hugarian water too! The first bottle I bought had the best recipe (original?) in it; but it was the edition with the cork plug and a fair amount of the perfume evaporated! When I bought the second bottle it was hermetic, but the fragrance was no more the same. I think that for this one it was a matter of some ingredients that had to be changed, because of law or protection of one of the plants of the original recipe.

But... my all time favorites were Vetiver perfume (Of which I hope the Lime perfume will have some reminiscence)and Sandalwood shampoo.

I wrote Crabtree&Evelyn in London some years ago and the lady who came back to me was as saddened than I, that Vetiver got killed. It was her all time favorite, too. She said it was because of reorientation or not enough people buying this fragrance. But she suggested that I write from time to time or that I just keep an eye to new developments. Which I did today, happily ending here, with other "inconditionnels"!

Posted by: Michel Lapointe | March 28, 2011

Now, I'm going to cross my fingers with you that Crabtree & Evelyn might one day be so inspired to bring back their Vetiver. It sounds like it was a hidden gem.

Posted by: Marie-Helene Wagner | March 30, 2011

I LOVED the discontinued "White Birch" bath and body -- of course, it's been years, but I haven't given up hope. Anyone have some?

Posted by: Jean | July 10, 2011

I also used to wear the long-discontinued C&E Millefleurs too! It was my signature scent in the late 80s as teenager.

Recently I have been exploring perfumes and wanted to smell Millefluers again.

My mother actually still had the EDT in my old bedroom dresser! It smells great!

Does anyone know what the notes are/were? I'm very curious to find out.

I'm new to this perfumista thing - so I can't quite tell what I'm smelling.

It's floral of course - I *think* I'm getting Rose & Jasmine & some Violet - but also lots of other things so blended that it's hard to pick out. I'm also trying to put my finger on what the base is - there's a little something extra that makes it slightly (only slightly) plush - a touch of amber, maybe? At first I thought musk but now I'm not sure.

There's also a very pleasant and faintly "waxy" note that reminds me a little of Gucci Rush. Not the peachy/fruity-ness of Rush at all - but that happy & waxy part of its character.

Finally - it went on slightly bitter and musty at the opening - in a way that frankly startled me and reminded me fleetingly of some of the old chypres, like Cabochard. Nothing so big and tough of course - just was a whiff for a moment, then on to the flowers. It really startled me, and I wasn't sure if it was some kind of damage to the EDT over time - some kind of chemical degradation - or if this simple floral bouquet actually had some chypre muscle in it.

Anyhow - very curious! Would love to know if anyone knows!

Posted by: Wesley Hall Parker | October 23, 2011

I don't know the notes, nor have I smelled the perfume, but traditional recipes of Millefleurs always warranted the use of amber. There were besides floral notes, aromatic ones too. Of course as it launched in 1980, it would have also smelled like a perfume of its era.

Posted by: Marie-Helene Wagner | October 24, 2011

Good news!
by chance I tried the "Terre d´Hermes" and compaired it with the very last drops of my beloved "C&E for men" and....it smells equal or even better!!!!
So I have a new love und my wife also is enthusiastic!
What more can I want?
Heinrich from Germany

Posted by: Heinrich | October 24, 2011

Ah, a happy man

Posted by: Marie-Helene Wagner | October 24, 2011

for those of you looking for the C & E Devon Violet..you might want to check out Yardley of London's April Violet. Not easy to find either, but very similar to C&E's, and was what i wore BEFORE C&E when April Violets was discontinued.

Posted by: jphelps | November 9, 2011

I just found this site and I so need to find someone that has or knows where I can find C&E's old scent "Meridian"...not sure I am spelling it right but have been searching for quite a few years now. We saved the very last drop and finally I guess it got thrown away, but would like to find it. I found a website today that can make perfumes, but of course they don't have a sample on their list, but I left my info and it says they will send an email if they are able to make it lol. Please email me if anyone has or knows who might have a stash of this yummy stuff. karorobi@yahoo.com

Posted by: Karen Lindsey | February 4, 2012

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