Patchwork
Avon (1973)

Patchwork by Avon (1973) is a sharp aldehyde white floral, with a powdery-mossy base, bitter woody green moments within, almost an also-ran to an also-ran and feeling so related to Avon Unspoken (1975) as to feel like maybe it was a precursor to it, leading up to the better latter scent release. Very little information and no advertisements remain to really inform what this scent was all about, so it must have really been in the dregs of Avon's in-house formula development at the time, with an initial release in an old creamery-style milk jug bottle with a brass handle, featuring a pressurized spray. Accompanying powders, soap sets, and creams also existed as per the course with Avon from this period, and it was quickly parted out to novelty decanters before appearing one last time in a standard spring-pump natural spray fluted bottle before ceasing to exist forever.

The scent opens with bright aldehydes, and comes in dry, dry, and more dry. Clearly a focus on lily of the valley materials in this one, we get some orris, some geranium, narcissus, heliotrope, vetiver, cedar, oakmoss, and bittering green elements like styrallyl acetate. Ma Griffe by Carven (1946) this is not, and the most-direct knee-jerk response might be to compare this with Estée Lauder Private Collection (1973), although being concurrent releases from a time before Avon used IFF for perfumery makes this highly unlikely to be related work. More likely, Avon was doing internally what they later did externally with firms like IFF, making multiple iterations of a composition, then altering, releasing, renaming, rehashing until something stuck. This is much easier with outsourced perfumery, as the mods are all sort of there at the same time to be picked over, and I think Patchwork was a victim of Avon's iterative development process that lead to the success of Unspoken.

That said, Patchwork isn't a bad fragrance, just very typical and slightly outmoded for the 1970's, which may be the point as Avon was always chasing multiple generations of customer at this time; they made some things purposely staid and behind a bit for mom and grandmom, and some things they thought might be more chic for daughter and granddaughter, plus the token wet shavery-things for dad and son. The one-size fits all approach for men was definitely not applicable to their women's releases which outnumbered them 6 to 1 in this period, and a lot of them fell off a cliff like Patchwork did, for being a stupid name and stupid motif with a boring or basic fragrance that reeks of "gift for in-laws" with the packaging, to be worn once or twice then stuffed into a box for 50 years until someone like me uncovers it on eBay. Not bad, but not really one to seek out unless you are a complete Avon junkie. Neutral

I'm wearing this today and find it to be a pretty, unassuming soft aldehyic little number. There is a bit of Narcissus I believe. It has a classic feel, in keeping with No 5, though not on the same level. Still, someone without the $$$ for Chanel No 5 could use this as a substitute and feel elegant and lovely. It shares that powdery character, I'm going to guess it has Iris, Aldehydes, Narcissus, perhaps Heliotrope and some white florals. The base must have a bit of civet, musk and sandalwood.