Avon Timeless: Is it Soup Yet?

When I was at the Smithsonian seminar on the history of perfume last fall see post, Luca Turin interjected a point about perfumes that pretty much put a lot of elements into a perfume without them ever coming together as a whole, and/or cram in so many parts that it just goes over the top.  He said he refers to such perfumes as "soup."

The Avon Timeless recipe, per Basenotes:

Aldehyde, Lemon, Bergamot, Gardenia

Cedarwood, Patchouli, Rose, Orris

Olibanum, Opopanax, Amber, Musk, Vanilla, Tonka

Yes.  Those are there.  In the same way you can put flour and butter and eggs and vanilla and milk into a bowl and not have a cake, but have have the smells of flour and butter and eggs and vanilla and milk, all of those elements are there.

Actually, push down on the stuff a little bit.  There are times when some blend, at least in short bits.

Remember, I am a scent amplifier, and tend to run things in slow motion.  Even so, to see/hear/smell nearly every one of these notes pop out was both kind a Dick and Jane reader whose theme was "see perfume run" and Chinese water torture.  The worst part of the slow drip of the water torture was that there were times when I wanted to like it, and thought maybe it was going somewhere.  (Which never happened.)  And times when, a full day later, I caught a whiff of something that smelled good, and went in to huff with the eager hope that magic had happened.  (It didn't.)

I'm sorry.  I love cheap thrills.  I won't back off of admitting my fondness for things that aren't cool.   This one has its fans; you can find thrilled happy people partaking of the Timeless on Makeup Alley.  I've even met a few.

But initial runs tell me that, on me at least, it's not soup yet.

For opoponax soup that works, see March's review of Memo Manoa. That one also packed it in, but somehow pulls it off.  Also, for fellow opoponax fiends, I remind you of the cheap thrill Olfacta once shared:  L'Aromarine Opoponax.  I enjoy both, though the second in very light doses.  Manoa has gelled into a worthy soup.  The L'Aromarine is not a fully rounded something; it's more like cake batter, but the kind you like to eat off the spoon.

photo author's own.