Anya’s Garden Timeless: Birthday Blast

CaFleureBon was honored to have three perfumers create fragrances to commemorate our first birthday. Anya McCoy of Anya’s Flowers chose to do a re-formulation of her most popular fragrance Starflower.

One of the best things about the first year of CaFleureBon’s existence has been the relationship we have had with the Natural Perfume community. One of the closest ties we have had has been to The Natural Perfumer’s Guild of which Ms. McCoy is the head of. Through her efforts and the other talented members of the Guild I have been exposed time and again to the wide range of fragrance they can achieve. In both The Mystery of Musk and Outlaw Perfumes projects, which Ms. McCoy and the Guild sponsored, the participants proved they can create just about anything when they put their mind to it.

Ms. McCoy is one of the seasoned veterans of natural perfumery and Starflower is one of her best compositions as it combines chocolate and tuberose to create a heady floral gourmand. For CaFleureBon’s birthday scent, Timeless, she started with Starflower as the foundation. The main addition to Timeless is another white flower, as well as EIC Michelyn Camen’s favorite perfume note, orange blossom. Orange blossom to steal a line from Ms. Camen is the “other white flower”. When one usually thinks of indolic white flowers tuberose and jasmine are the top of the charts. Orange blossom adds the same intense quality but in a different more subtle way. Early on you don’t notice the dirty indoles and all of a sudden they are there, like they snuck in the back door. Ms. McCoy uses that sneaky quality to turn Starflower into Timeless and allows it to sneak up on you.

Ms. McCoy stated she wanted Timeless to be the daytime counterpart to Starflower. At the opening she keeps the lemon top notes from before but she adds a spicy peppery note to create a bit of bite to the opening of Timeless. The heart begins with the orange blossom delicate at first then turning more concentrated and before you know it tuberose has joined and it is an all-out white flower extravaganza. The slow almost teasing build-up to that extravaganza is the best part of Timeless. Each time I wore it I waited as it developed languorously into something quite intense. The base retains the chocolate which is kept lighter by adding some vanilla as contrast. It is a gourmand base but it also is lighter than its predecessor.

Timeless has average longevity and modest sillage.

I think Timeless does achieve the goal Ms. McCoy set for herself to create a daytime version of Starflower. Timeless is lighter overall but once the tuberose and orange blossom are comingling one would be hard pressed to call this light. It takes a while for Timeless to achieve that level and that is why it is a good daytime fragrance because even though it is intense it is not overwhelming and that does make it something easily worn in the sunshine; or on your birthday.

Disclosure: This review was based on a sample of Timeless provided by Anya’s Garden.

Mark Behnke, Managing Editor

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15 comments

  • Claudia Kroyer says:

    I love when Cafleurebon does reviews or mentions/introduces us to some of the perfumers that we do not hear of as often as it truly opens a door to exploring new scents. Timeless sound beautiful i may just have to try this one.

  • Thanks for the review! Do you find tuberose a principal player? Or is it playing peek-a-boo, somewhat like in La Chasse aux Papillons? (assuming that you have the same experience with tuberose there which you may or may not have).

  • I like the idea of what Mark is describing as "a good daytime fragrance…easily worn in the sunshine". But mostly I just want to thank Anya for her role in bringing to fruition the Outlaw Perfume Project. I've been enjoying her Ambress from that collection as well as having sampled some other very lovely creations from that project.

  • I haven't smelt Anya's Starflower but it would be interesting to do a side by side comparison!

  • Denise Smith says:

    CaFleureBon, you are so mature for a one year old!  I would love to start my day with Anya's perfume.
    Denise  

  • I'm already a fan of Anya's Starflower, so this variation is something I must sniff. I also want to thank Cafleurabon for featuring so many natural perfumes in it's reviews — I love seeing natural perfumers featured more!

  • LauraMatheson says:

    I would love to try Timeless, along with all of Anya's other amazing sounding scents which I hope to sample in the very near future 🙂

  • This sounds like it smells AMAZING! Would love to try it! And Happy Birthday to CaFleureBon!

  • It's so nice to read here about how all of the various named notes in Timeless play out and come together, and how they work with each other over time.  The article really does a good job of showing how a natural perfume is, at the very least, a four-dimensional entity. 

  • I'm a fan who'd like to win a new fragrance . . . elsewhere you asked for suggestions about flowers . . . viburnum?  That's a wonderful smell!