Back in 2021 I decanted my supply of E.D. Pinaud's Lilac Vegetal into the glass bottle shown above. I got it for five dollars at Home Goods, took it to my crib, spent ten minutes washing it out in the sink, and let it dry out completely before decanting. My goal was to see if I could eliminate the plasticky off-notes in LV, as decanting in glass works wonders for Clubman, and in early 2022 I revisited it.
I found that the plastic odor (the result of off-gassing, a common issue with cheap plastics) had reduced, but had not entirely disappeared, and realized that LV was far more resistant to "mellowing" than the 1940s Clubman, which only takes a month or two to lose its plastic "ick." I decided to stow the bottle and let it sit longer. I figured the product was worth waiting for, and if it took a few years to truly smooth out, so be it. I have something like fifteen aftershaves in my rotation, plus a full, NOS (unopened before my ownership) vintage glass bottle of LV from sometime before the Nixon administration, so there was no rush. Lilac Water is the sort of thing that collects dust quite well.
The other day I decided to give it a whirl. Popped the cork, splashed some in hand, and applied it liberally over face and body. The result? Noticeable improvement. Its formerly aggressive stewed-cabbage top notes now smell powdery and very close to vintage, while the "pissy" musk is drier and not nearly as pissy as it once was. It now reads as a properly funky Victorian floral, sans plastic. With light application, a powdery element, which is even more prominent in the vintage formula, seems to be the main feature, and the musk is deeper yet less noticeable. Go heavy and the muskiness rapidly gets overbearing. It's like going from a gentle safety razor to Lizzy Borden-with-axe; there is no middle ground with this stuff. You need to go easy, it gives you no choice.
The vintage stuff has a bit of what smells like sassafras in the powdery notes, particularly in the first five minutes, and the floral note is muted in the drydown. The current formula smells dissimilar to its predecessor when stored in plastic, but changes into something much closer to it after three years in glass. It's basically a hint of medicinal powder, a burst of lilac sweetness, and a synthetic deer musk accord that smells overtly animalic at the wrong dose, and simply like a sweet powdered musk in the correct one. I am sure that Lilac Vegetal is the only true surviving representation of Victorian cologne, and it galls me that Pinaud sells everything in crappy plastic these days, but I guess there's no sense in banging that drum over and over again. It is what it is.
My suggestion to serious wetshavers who want to experience LV in its "pristine" form is to decant into clean glass, let sit for no less than two years, and meanwhile use other stuff. Come back to it when it's ready, and you'll be in for a treat. Lilac Vegetal is a pleasant and easily wearable springtime aftershave/cologne that works best when used lightly, and in glass it smells softer, drier, and rather like it never touched plastic.