Field Flowers
Avon (1974)

All that VR said.

Reminds me of the small dried straw flowers available for sale in crafts stores.

Avon Field Flowers (1974) has a rather innocuous name for a fragrance, and the ad copy for it is also pretty innocent to boot, stating "a fragrance of springtime, sunshine, and all the flowers in the field". This "new and beautifully delicate" fragrance as the ad states, feels to me more like a cousin to Avon Charisma (1970) than anything else, so much that it could be a flanker of it if flankers were a thing back then. Field Flowers had a big push, and the original cologne mist bottles looked like little bundles of picked wildflowers, green glass with a yellow or purple top. Overall, this is a "yellow" floral chypre, less green overall than Charisma, less emphasis on rose or soapy notes of orris, but juxtaposed with a smoothed form of civet in the base all the same. I imagine the idea here was to make a carefree fragrance that competed with stuff like Revlon Charlie (1973), but with Avon's penchant for ignoring trend-setting accords or novel molecules and doing it "their way" with whatever raw material stock or conventional perfumery styles they had stuck with for their near-century existence up to that point, assured any comparison unfair. A staid and simplistic design with anonymous in-house perfumers and quality self-sourced naturals housed in eye-catching if somewhat tacky bottles people would often buy blind from magazine adverts was how Avon got you so much for your money in those days, and it sits in stark contrast to the avant-garde of the designer perfume world of the day. I like Field Flowers and recommend trying it, but before going further must say that this is almost a poster child for run-of-the-mill 70's Avon.

The opening of Field Flowers mimics Charisma in most respects but one: no galbanum. Field Flowers has the same soft bergamot opening followed by notes of rose, jasmine, but only a bit of orris and not enough to really give a noticeable savon accord (until the late dry down). Lily of the valley raw materials (probably lyral as was popular then) also enter here, and some fleshy tuberose followed with some marigold to really strike out that "field flowers effect" come next. Somewhere between Patou Joy (1970) and Chanel No. 5 (1921) but obviously without the aldehydes or the same level of consummate blending is the heart of Field Flowers, being it has half the notes anyway. Civet, vetiver, oakmoss, and labdanum come next to finish up Field Flowers in a smooth yellow ochre glow that could really be any such floral from the 50's or 60's, which is probably part of why Field Flowers got lost in the mix after only a few years and Charisma stayed on the books. Ultimately, once everything settles onto skin, what you have here with Avon Field Flowers is a floral chypre, fairly academic with no frills, using basic design to imply a meadow of gold as the adverts claim, then drying down into a semi-soapy, semi-musky, mossy finish with just the slightest touches of powder. Anyone who loves chypres can wear Field Flowers, but it has a decidedly "good girl" vibe to it that goes counter to the tomboyish free-spirited citric floral green chypre that was Revlon Charlie. Wear time reaches 8 hours and performance is admirable despite the cologne labeling, with Field Flowers feeling distantly spring-like.

There's not a ton to separate Field Flowers from other Avon floral chypres of the time like Avon Unspoken (1975) or Avon Emprise (1976) besides the pastoral quietude implied by the floral arrangement. A lot of chypres Avon made at this time took different paths to the same destination, which is to say no different than their iterative compositional style in other decades, swapping out bases with fresh top notes, or making fragrances that could be flankers of other fragrances but without being marketed or named such. If you like anything I've named, you'll likely enjoy Field Flowers too, and if you just generally like vintage 70's floral chypres anyway, you can't go wrong. Avon Field Flowers won't have the sass or wherewithal of designer fare of the decade coming from the likes of Givenchy, Chanel, Dior, Balmain, and Hermès, but it does have similar quality just being used to paint a more serene picture with fewer brush strokes. If you go looking for Field Flowers, you can find the full suite of foaming bath oil, creme and powder sachets, soaps, and more in a host of containers ranging from bucolic to bizarre. The fact so much of these accessory products still exist tells me that unlike classics such as Charisma, a lot of this sat unused after purchase or gifting. Still, even a B-side for vintage Avon is better than most modern designer A-sides in this genre anymore thanks to materials restrictions, so someone specifically looking for this unintentionally postmodern chypre style can start here rather than pay a luxury or artisanal brand a fortune for similar. Thumbs up