This week we’re helping Barbara’s mother empty out her basement. It’s full of stuff moved in from her mother’s house, when she died, and these are boxes untouched for 25+ years.
She lived in a little out-of-the-way rural village in central Ohio for years. Collecting, apparently. So as we unpack boxes, we’re traveling back in time to a world where design sensibilities were utterly different. Welcome to the world of Avon.
About 300 pieces of Avon collectibles discovered so far. Among the most bizarre—yet cloyingly attractive—are this doggie:
and this utterly strange arrangement of a milk glass wicker rocking chair, upon which is perched a gold plastic kitty cat:
Now, I’m not questioning taste, needless to say. Any reader will know I’m in no position to question others. But what I am curious about is the cultural setting that gives rise to lines of literally thousands of such items. They’re filled with scent, which is not really intended to be used by the ounce. They’re designed to be outrageous and eye-catching. They share a certain kitschiness, of course, that signals something between the buyers and the sellers.
But… how can there be so little impact on our modern online Internetsy culture by these design sensibilities?
Or am I just begging for trouble, by asking?
What, I wonder, is the Avon of web design? Modern magazine typography? Book design? (I think I know that one: I think the Jehovah’s Witnesses do their books in exactly the same state as the Avon designers did their sculpting.)
What about those little javascript snowflakes or rose petals that fall down a page? Or the lake applet?
Those kitschy Avon collectibles may be worth a lot of money. Someone, somewhere, is trying to complete the set.
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What’s possibly unusual about Grandma’s collection is 1) she was never an Avon lady and 2) there’s no theme to her collecting. Except maybe “Let’s get everything in this catalog” as we found she may have done since we found some catalogs and recognized most of the pieces.
The catalogs were a real find — not in a monetary sense, but it really gave me an appreciation for the mechanics of being Avon. I’m being serious, here! We found most of a year’s worth of campaign brochures (1972).
For instance: In the catalogs were numerous references to “our revolutionary heritage” — so the whole Bicentennial aura lasted longer than I remembered (but I was in 2nd grade in 1972, so my memory is certainly suspect). The current fascination for the ’70’s seems to neglect the first half of the decade (early-Americana and flower power) in favor of the sky blues and muddy browns and golds of the latter half.
There were models wearing that shiny blue eyeshadow, but there were also African-American models (male and female), who appeared without comment — in other words, they weren’t called out as being black, they just appeared to be yer average Avonites.
The art department at Avon must’ve been huge. Twenty-four to 26 campaign brochures (plus specials) in pre-computer-layout days probably kept a lot of people busy. While there was some repetition for the individual ad pages, after a few weeks there would be a different feature, so the product would have a different size ad (or be in a different combination with other similar items).
Whatever you think of the objects themselves, or of the things depicted, in most cases they were executed quite well. The plastic bits fit like they were supposed to, lines lined up properly from the glass to the plastic, monocolor items were the same color from end to end. The only failure I’ve seen so far is a “Victorian lady” whose plastic piled-on hair looks like somebody attached a bag full of white yarn balls to the top of her head — but it looks that way in the photograph, too, so it’s not just a mismatch on our part.
And finally, “Field Flowers” as a scent? Yuk. It’s the one fragrance that epitomizes the worst aspect of a houseful of Avon bottles. It’s the smell I remember when I think about Avon en masse, and how I used to hate it so. But all the colognes together, though mostly overpowering… well, the past few days I’ve spent sorting through her bottles brought me some memories of Grandma. And that’s not so bad.
Rhapsodizing aside, I think the Internet equivalent of Avon is any blogging software.
Each individual component can be beautifully done, and may even be useful. The programmers give the user possibilities for expressing themselves though design and/or functionality, but some people just don’t know when to quit.