There’s a good chance that some of your first memories of perfume were of Avon. Maybe it was the fragrances themselves: Cotillion, Sweet Honesty, Timeless, or Bird of Paradise were a few. Or, more likely, it was the bottles shaped like everything from pianos to Model T cars to colonial dames. If you haven’t looked at an Avon catalog lately, you’re in for a surprise. First, no more kitschy bottles. Your chance to own Timeless bottled in a giant penny is gone. Next, although Sweet Honesty survived, most of the old perfumes have been replaced with newer, sexier products, like Imari, Christian Lacroix Rouge, and, yes, Bond Girl 007.
Avon began its life in 1886 in upstate New York as The California Perfume Company. David McConnell, who started the company, stumbled on the idea of selling perfume when he found that the free rose oil samples he handed out so that ladies would listen to his pitch to buy books were more popular than the books themselves. With the help of a local pharmacist he created the company’s first collection of fragrances, called Little Dot Perfumes. In 1939, The California Perfume Company changed its name to Avon. Avon still sells its products door-to-door, but now you can also buy them online or at special boutiques in malls.
Avon launched Bond Girl 007 in fall 2008 to coincide with the release of the new Bond film, Quantum of Solace…
One litmus test of a store’s success in New York City is the frequency with which its logo shopping bags are spotted on the street and on the subway. I’ve noticed quite a few Sabon bags being carried and reused for other purposes by my fellow commuters, so I decided it was time for me to revisit one of this company’s local boutiques. I’ve visited Sabon a few times before, but I usually left empty-handed. Some of the products and scents just didn’t appeal to me, and others bothered me slightly by looking too similar to items from other brands (