The Estée Lauder Companies
By Kilian batch code checker
By Kilian — now Kilian Paris — joined The Estée Lauder Companies in 2016, and bottles produced since then carry the group's standard three-character code. Earlier bottles, from the years when the house was independent, use a different and much less consistent stamping, which is why an older Kilian code may not decode cleanly.
Where By Kilian prints the code
On the base of the bottle, and on the lacquered clutch or coffret the bottle ships in.
What the characters mean
Three characters: product-line character, month (1–9, then A, B, C for October–December), then the last digit of the year.
Worked example
C41
reads as April 2021
By Kilian batch code questions
Why will my older By Kilian code not decode?
By Kilian only adopted the Estée Lauder coding convention after the house was acquired in 2016. Bottles filled before that carry the independent house's own stamping, which was never standardised or published. If your code does not fit the line/month/year shape, an early production run is the most likely explanation.
Does the refillable Kilian bottle share a code with its refill?
No. The refill carries its own batch code from its own filling run, so a refilled bottle holds juice with a different production date from the code stamped on the original vessel. Check the refill's packaging, not the bottle base, if you want to know how fresh the liquid actually is.
Is a batch code enough to authenticate a Kilian bottle?
No — and Kilian is a heavily counterfeited house, so this matters. A well-made fake will carry a plausible code. The stronger authenticity signals are the weight and finish of the lacquered clutch, the precision of the cap magnet, and whether the fragrance was bought through an authorised channel at all.
Same scheme, other houses
These brands sit under The Estée Lauder Companies and stamp their bottles the same way, so if you can read one you can read them all.
Try it before you commit
Checking a batch code is usually a way of asking whether a bottle is worth the money. A By Kilian decant answers that on your own skin, poured from a bottle whose source we log — no marketplace gamble, no full-bottle regret.