What Is Crabtree & Evelyn Perfume?

Crabtree & Evelyn is an American-founded personal-care and fragrance house that built its identity out of English garden imagery. The business started in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where its first shop traded as The Soap Box; in 1971 its founder, Cyrus Harvey, went into partnership with the English designer Peter Windett, renamed the company Crabtree & Evelyn, and wrapped soaps, bath oils and colognes in botanical plates lifted from old herbal books. The name is a double tribute: the crab-apple (the wild apple of English hedgerows) and John Evelyn, the seventeenth-century English diarist and gardener.

The fragrances — Nantucket Briar (1985), Summer Hill (1988), Sienna (1991), Song de Chine (1997), Evelyn Rose (2003), Nadira (2006) — were sold through more than a hundred shops on three continents until the retail chain wound down in 2019. That is the short answer to why collectors now hunt the bottles: the perfumes were never reformulated for a modern portfolio, they were simply stopped.

A Soap Shop in Cambridge, a Garden in Surrey

Cyrus Harvey was not a perfumer. He was a film distributor — the co-founder of Janus Films, the company that first brought Bergman and Kurosawa to American art houses — with a second career in scented soap. In 1971, on a trip to London, he met Peter Windett, a young English designer, and the two began a twenty-five-year partnership that split the work cleanly: Harvey invented the products, Windett invented the look. Windett's packaging borrowed the grammar of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century herbals — hand-coloured plates, Latin binomials, engraved borders — and the shops were fitted out to feel like the still room of an old English house, where flowers were distilled and oils were steeped.

The retail roll-out reads like a case study in accidental authenticity. A stall in Faneuil Hall in Boston in 1977; the first free-standing shop in the Montgomery Mall in Montgomeryville, Pennsylvania; and then, in 1980, a store on Kensington Church Street in London — opened, the company has always admitted, because American tourists kept walking into English department stores and asking where the Crabtree & Evelyn shop was. A Massachusetts soap company opened a London flagship to satisfy Americans looking for the England it had invented.

Ownership changed hands repeatedly. In 1996 Harvey sold the company to the Malaysian plantation group Kuala Lumpur Kepong Berhad, which ran it through CE Holdings with research, manufacturing and design still in Alpharetta, Georgia. July 2009 brought a Chapter 11 filing in Manhattan and the closure of 30 of its 126 American stores. In 2012 the business was sold to the Hong Kong holding company Khuan Choo International for a reported US$155 million, and in October 2016 to Nan Hai Corporation, also of Hong Kong. In November 2018 the company announced that retail and wholesale operations would cease worldwide during 2019; the brand relaunched on 16 July 2019 as an online-only business pitched at a younger, "Zillennial" shopper. The US storefront went quiet again in February 2022, and today the name survives mainly through its Malaysian operation and, more visibly, through the secondary market for its old fragrances.

Why the Bottles Suddenly Matter

Three things make Crabtree & Evelyn an unusually good hunting ground right now.

First, the archive is far bigger than the reputation. Parfumo catalogues 106 Crabtree & Evelyn fragrances; Fragrantica lists around fifty released between 1970 and 2019, from the founding colognes to the Night Garden series of 2013 and the final releases before the shutdown. The house released in every category — soliflores, green florals, masculine leathers, amber fougères, a whole run of solifloral eaux de cologne — which means there is a genuine collecting map rather than one famous bottle.

Second, the format is collector-friendly. Because this was a soap-and-bath house, it bottled in sizes nobody makes now: 125 ml and 240 ml colognes, 60 ml eau de toilette, splash bottles with ground-glass stoppers, gift sets that paired a fragrance with its body cream. Large-format cologne from a discontinued house is the single most under-priced category in vintage perfume.

Third, the prices have not caught up. A 1985 Nantucket Briar or a 1991 Sienna still costs a fraction of a comparable Guerlain from the same decade, and the supply is finite and shrinking — cologne-strength juice in an open splash bottle evaporates, so the surviving full bottles are the ones that were stored properly.

Ten Crabtree & Evelyn Scents Every Collector Should Know

1. Nantucket Briar (1985) — the house's most romantic perfume and its most collected: an oriental floral built on amber, rose, bergamot and vanilla over green notes, which Parfumo files as floral-spicy. It is the smell of a cottage garden at the end of a hot day, and it is the bottle most often named when collectors argue about the house.
2. Summer Hill (1988) — the best-selling floral, and by community ratings the most consistently liked thing Crabtree & Evelyn ever made: a green, sunlit floral rather than a sweet one, with the hay-and-hedgerow feel the brand sold so well.
3. Sienna (1991) — the masculine classic. A leather fragrance in the old European mode: spices, leather, green notes and citrus, closer to a 1970s Italian cologne than to anything released in 1991. Often bottled at 125 ml in a decanter with a black mushroom cap.
4. Song de Chine (1997) — the quiet one, and the most modern idea in the archive: green tea, bamboo and sandalwood, a clean green-woody scent that anticipated the tea fragrances of the 2000s by several years.
5. Evelyn Rose (2003) — the rose soliflore, launched when the brand was repositioning itself as a gift-house. Simple, fresh, and the easiest entry point for anyone who wants the house style without the vintage risk.
6. Nadira (2006) — a floral-fruity built on apricot, nectarine and bergamot over rose, gardenia and jasmine, with spices, sandalwood, amber and musk underneath. The most "2000s" of the line and the one that reads as a modern niche release today.
7. Iris (2010) — an iris eau de toilette in the powdered, rooty style, printed directly on a faceted flacon with a botanical plate of the flower. Iris was never the commercial hit the roses were, which is exactly why it is now scarce.
8. Lily of the Valley (2011) — muguet, the house's signature spring soliflore, green and slightly soapy in the way the best lily-of-the-valley scents are. It is also the scent most often confused on the secondary market, because several English houses made almost the same bottle.
9. Moroccan Myrrh (2014) — the late-period men's amber fougère: black pepper, petitgrain and bergamot over cardamom, lavender and geranium, with myrrh, guaiac wood and amber at the base. Released only five years before the shutdown, it is the most modern thing in the archive and already hard to find.
10. Hungary Water — not a modern release but a historical reconstruction. Hungary Water (Eau de Hongrie) is the oldest named European fragrance still bottled today: a rosemary-and-herb tonic traditionally dated to the fourteenth century and said to have been made for Queen Elizabeth of Hungary. Crabtree & Evelyn's version is a green, herbal cologne — and the example in our stock is a limited-edition 1976 bottling, which makes it the oldest Crabtree & Evelyn object we have handled.

Crabtree & Evelyn In Stock at TrendyGround

Every bottle below is a single unit, photographed from our own stock, with the label read against the photograph before listing. Concentrations and volumes are as printed on the bottle or carton.

Also on the shelf, and worth asking about: Passion Flower Eau de Toilette 100 ml ($166) in its illustrated botanical carton; Lily of the Valley Eau de Toilette 100 ml ($112); and Iris ($130) in the tall faceted flacon with the iris plate printed on the glass.

How to Authenticate a Crabtree & Evelyn Bottle

Crabtree & Evelyn is not a heavily counterfeited brand — the fakes that exist are usually generic "English garden" bottles with a borrowed crest. The real risk is misdescription: sellers who read a word off the carton and call it the scent name. Five checks settle almost every case.

• Read the bottle, not the listing. From the late 2000s the house printed the botanical plate and the scent name directly onto the glass; 1980s and 1990s stock used a paper label with a thin border. If a listing says one name and the glass says another, the glass wins.
• Check the crest and the border. Genuine cartons carry CRABTREE & EVELYN® in a serif face above a laurel-and-shield crest, inside a striped or botanical border. The name is always two words joined by an ampersand.
• Volume and strength are printed, not implied. Expect "100 mL e 3.4 FL OZ", "125 ml e 4.4 FL.OZ.", "60 mL e 2 FL OZ" and an alcohol figure in degrees on French-filled stock (76° to 85° Vol.). A carton with no metric volume is usually not original to the bottle.
• Look at the fill line before you look at the price. Cologne-strength juice in a splash bottle has been evaporating since the 1980s; a 1985 bottle that is still 90% full was stored cool and upright, and it is worth more than a brim-full bottle of something five years old.
• Do not confuse the genre. Woods of Windsor, Bronnley, Floris, Yardley and Taylor of Old Bond Street all made lily-of-the-valley and lavender waters in near-identical glass. We have seen a Woods of Windsor "Lily of the Valley" parfum de toilette sold as Crabtree & Evelyn simply because a seller searched the word "Lily" — check the name printed on the base or the carton before you buy.

Crabtree & Evelyn Among the English Heritage Houses

House	Origin	Signature	Status today
Crabtree & Evelyn	USA, 1971 (from a 1955 soap shop)	Nantucket Briar, Sienna	Retail closed 2019, online relaunch
Woods of Windsor	England, Windsor	Lily of the Valley, True Rose	Vintage stock only
Bronnley	England, 1884	English Flower, Lemon Soap	Still trading
Floris	London, 1730	Jermyn Street florals	Family-owned, still trading
Yardley	London, 1770	Lavender, English Lavender	Mass market

For the collector, that table is the practical answer to "is it rare?". Houses that are still trading can reformulate; houses that have stopped cannot. Crabtree & Evelyn sits in the small group whose fragrances stopped being made while the brand name kept moving — which is why a 1985 Nantucket Briar and a 2019 online relaunch can share a logo and have nothing else in common.

Buying and Keeping Vintage Cologne

Cologne and eau de toilette are the most fragile concentrations in perfume: low oil content, high alcohol, and a bottle that was designed for daily use rather than for a shelf. Three rules keep them alive. Store upright, in the dark, below about 20°C — light degrades citrus tops first, which is why old colognes smell of nothing for thirty seconds before the base arrives. Keep the original carton; for a discontinued house the box is half the object, and a Nantucket Briar carton carries the botanical plate that identifies the year. And do not top up a vintage splash bottle with anything, ever — a mixed bottle is worth less than an empty one.

If you are new to the house, start with one floral and one masculine: a Nantucket Briar or an Evelyn Rose alongside a Sienna or a Moroccan Myrrh. That pairing tells you within a week whether the Crabtree & Evelyn aesthetic — dry, green, botanical, deliberately unfashionable — is your kind of perfume. Two more archives in the same spirit are worth reading next: our Molinard guide for the Grasse family house that has never been sold, and our Houbigant guide for the 1775 house that invented the fougère.

Frequently Asked Questions About Crabtree & Evelyn Perfume

Is Crabtree & Evelyn still in business?

Partly. The company announced in November 2018 that its retail and wholesale operations would cease worldwide during 2019, and the brand relaunched on 16 July 2019 as an online-only business. The US website stopped selling in February 2022 and has been dormant since; the Malaysian operation still trades. No new Crabtree & Evelyn fragrance has been added to the house's archive since 2019, so every bottle discussed here is discontinued stock.

Is Crabtree & Evelyn a British brand?

No — it is American, and that is the most interesting thing about it. Crabtree & Evelyn began in Cambridge, Massachusetts, took its name from the English diarist John Evelyn and the English crab-apple tree, printed its packaging with plates from old English herbals, and opened its first London shop in 1980 on Kensington Church Street specifically because American tourists kept looking for it in England. The Englishness was a design decision, executed so well that most buyers still assume the brand is British.

What does Nantucket Briar smell like?

Nantucket Briar (1985) is an oriental floral, catalogued by Parfumo as floral-spicy: amber and rose over bergamot, vanilla and green notes. It is warmer and denser than the green florals the brand is known for — closer to a soft amber than to a garden scent — and it has a reputation, among people who wore it in the 1980s, for being much stronger than a Crabtree & Evelyn eau de toilette has any right to be.

Which Crabtree & Evelyn perfumes are worth collecting?

The four that consistently hold value are Nantucket Briar (1985), Summer Hill (1988), Sienna (1991) and Song de Chine (1997) — the first two because they are the house's best-loved florals, Sienna because it is a genuinely good 1990s leather, and Song de Chine because it was ahead of the green-tea trend and is now scarce in any size. Evelyn Rose (2003) and Nadira (2006) are the easiest entry points; Moroccan Myrrh (2014) is the one to buy on sight, because it was in production for only five years.

Why was Crabtree & Evelyn discontinued?

The retail model failed rather than the perfume. After the 1996 sale to Kuala Lumpur Kepong Berhad, a 2009 Chapter 11 filing in the United States (with 30 of 126 American stores closed), a 2012 sale to Khuan Choo International for a reported US$155 million and a 2016 sale to Nan Hai Corporation, the brick-and-mortar chain became unprofitable and the owners announced in November 2018 that retail and wholesale would cease worldwide in 2019. The fragrances went with the shops.

Where can I buy discontinued Crabtree & Evelyn perfume?

Only on the secondary market — there is no current production. TrendyGround stocks a small, rotating selection of genuine bottles from our own inventory, each photographed and checked against the label before listing: see the Crabtree & Evelyn collection. Because the house made large-format colognes (125 ml and 240 ml), it is still possible to buy a full bottle from the 1980s at a price well below what a comparable French house would command.

All bottles described in this guide were examined in stock at TrendyGround, Hong Kong. Concentrations, volumes and scent names are as printed on the bottle or carton; where a carton is missing or a bottle is part-used, the listing says so.