Tribute
Avon (1963)

I now own four Avon for Men colognes and this is my favorite, slightly ahead of Black Suede. For Tribute (my bottle is the Knight chess piece), I get a light, spicy fougère with a nice touch of lavender. It's definitely a masculine barbershop scent. While performance is barely average, it's super inexpensive, so just bring a decant along to refresh. The other two Avon's I own: Wild Country (nice, I just don't prefer powdery-barbershop) and Deep Woods (doesn't smell pleasant).

Avon Tribute For Men Cologne Splash (Frosted Spartan Warrior Bust Decanter) -

Classic aromatic citrus chypre, full stop. Splish-splash with reckless abandon any time of the year.

The Spartan Warrior Bust decanter comes in 3 versions, all with the same juice: Clear glass w/ Ribbed glass helmet, Clear glass w/ Frosted glass helmet, and Blue glass w/ Chrome Helmet (limited edition). Thanks to Zealot Crusader for these details!

3 stars

At first sniff, a beautiful Citrus Anise-ed Lavender Aromatic, slim, sleek and Masculine. Conservative Linear drydown until hours later when then I identify a Animalic, mixed with my chest hair, pillows support and extension to the Aromatic. A mild pissy sour-ness bases this cleansing Herbal Smokiness. As has been suggested, a Sleeper. It's simple, stylish, smoothness....Rocks.

Stardate 20181009:

Starts nice and strong with musk, mint and anise notes. Would make a nice barbershop A/S.
The development is traditional and relatively quick. It ends with sweet tonka.
A decent one but not for me since mint is something I love in my tea and toothpaste but not in my fragrances :)

This has a conifer smell to me, which gives me an association with cardboard air fresheners. For the style, this one is pretty well done.

Avon was more or less just getting started with men's fragrance when this came around in 1963. They hadn't long been at abstract fragrances for either sex as their stock and trade since the late 1880's up until the late 1950's were soliflores or floral bouquet perfumes/colognes for women but men's fragrance had proven to be a growing segment of interest outside the realms of the drugstore with high-end European design houses making "Pour Monsieur" and "Pour Homme" fragrances to accompany their otherwise feminine lineups. Avon probably saw this was where they needed to be and started working towards that end too, even if they did have a cologne, some aftershaves and other mens' toiletries under the "Avon for Men" brand before this launched. The original Avon for Men cologne (1949) was basically a mentholated barbershop musk, lavender, coumarin, and geranium fragrance that was sort of fougere but not entirely. It was very basic but to the man that had only smelled Old Spice (1937), it was an adequate addition and made a better aftershave when the coumarin was swapped out for more menthol (pushing it sorta into chypre realms). Avon 'Vigorate (1957) wasn't much better, and introduced an odd sea salt accord to what was otherwise a powdery floral chypre. Whether or not this 1963 scent is considered the first true attempt by Avon at fine fragrance for men is entirely up to how you feel about what came beforehand, but all the advertisements of the day point to the emphasis of "oh look, now there's Avon for Men!" as if there hadn't been anything beforehand, even if the existence of the earlier and cruder stuff proves it wasn't the case. One thing is for certain: they sure did want to make a huge impression on the class factor with this stuff, because it's a out-and-out aromatic citrus chypre that draws it's biggest inspirations from Moustache by Rochas (1949), Monsieur de Givenchy (1959), and Chanel Pour Monsieur (1955), except a bit more up front with the citrus than most of those save maybe Moustache.

Avon must have learned very early on that taking popular scent themes/tropes and making them their own was far less risky than trying to invent something completely new from the ground up, because that's what this is to a T. Arden and Revlon both aped the French-born design of this genre as well, so Avon might as well too. They also learned that keeping things closer to the skin was the best way to keep overzealous application from ruining the scent, because this one is basically softer and projects less loudly than everything mentioned save maybe the Givenchy, which never really was that strong either. Tribute does the urinous civet/lemon juxtaposition equally as well as any of the French stuff that contains civet, and also has a stiffer accord of lavender and sandalwood to make it a bit more earthy than the chypres it mimics, but nowhere nearly as dry, giving it almost has a juicy lemon feel like the later Yves Saint Laurent Pour Homme (1971), which was still eight years away. The civet is still in charge with this one, much like Moustache, but not as heavy nor with as much floral support as something like Monsieur Lanvin (1964) from a year later. Folks who don't like a little dirty old-school animal funk in their smelly juice might want to steer clear of this, and it's also a bit rougher around the edges than anything from France that it emulates, but honestly smoother than some of it's American competitors, edging out Revlon's That Man (1958) in this regard. There's also a strange incence note here at the base too that makes it feel a bit warmer near the end. Men must have really dug this kind of dynamism between raunchy and refined, sexual and genteel, because a lot of really complex mid-century male scents from that side of the pond seemed to focus on this Yin and Yang approach, but no one notable in America had tried this outside the big corporate houses, as all the smaller houses were fussing with their barbershop and leather scents at the time. It makes perfect sense when Avon would take this kind of classy direction first when launching the diversification of the men's division in earnest, as it has always been their way to play it safe from an R&D standpoint by closely mimicking what's popular from more prestigious scent makers, and bring that down to the everyday folk who patronized them.

This is by no means a total "me too" ripoff scent, as every major US player was doing this as well, and Avon wouldn't start really plagiarizing until the late 70's rolled around. This is certainly "safe" for fans of old male chypres (even if comparatively risque otherwise for the 21st century), and very well done even if it doesn't have the timeless qualities of some later Avon scents from this decade. I was personally surprised to see them try to pull off something quite like this since they tend to shy away from animalics outside of synthetic white musks and ambers, but I have to remember that this is very, very early men's Avon, so anything goes at a time when they were still finding their footing in a new market. Fans of this 50's through early 70's style will undoubtedly love the surprising sophistication of Tribute, but for those who already have anything mentioned above, this is a variation on that theme and might not be different enough to seek acquisition unless you're just nuts for the style and want as many examples as you can get. I rank it ahead of most things America was doing in the aromatic citrus chypre category, but behind any of the French originals from which this took most of it's design cues. The original bottle for this was a Spartan warrior bust then later a more cylindrical bottle easiest for display before it entered vehicular decanter Hell. It's much more refined than most things made in the period by Avon but certainly not the most memorable 1960's masculine effort from this house, if only because the genre it comes from was already done to death beforehand. In conclusion, if you love classic men's perfume, and want something vintage, quirky, and still reasonably available, this might be just the low-risk fix you're after, and it even comes in a really radical bottle to boot. It's not the loudest scent on the planet but neither is the genre after which it's styled, so that can be forgiven. If this is truly a tribute to anything, it's honestly traditional perfume design dating back to the launch of Guerlain's Jicky (1889) and Mouchoir de Monsieur (1904). Probably the most underrated vintage Avon.