Pearls and Lace
Avon (1983)

Pearls & Lace by Avon (1983) is neat little peachy thing, with Avon's marketing team taking a look at Anais Anais by Cacharel (1978) and looking for ways to make it a bit more mature and stately for the aging women's perfume market Avon had at the time, before they went on a big spending spree to take over designer brands or court celebrities. The youth market had been given powdery prim sweet things throughout the 70's, playing up the innocence of youth with things like Roses, Roses by Avon (1972) or Sweet Honesty by Avon (1973), but all that was quickly backfiring as what teenage girls wanted wasn't pretty in pink, but big shoulder padded blouses in zebra print with teased up hair; they wanted to smell grown-up and more expensive than what Avon was peddling. So, the reaction was to keep serving mom and grandma with things that felt like "maturifications" of modern tropes; enter one fragrance called Pearls and Lace.

So what this does is take the somewhat fruity bubbly floral combinations in Anais Anais - namely the neroli, blackcurrant, rose, jasmine, violet, muguet, and carnation accords that Cacharel wraps in fresh greens and white musks - and divorces them from the structure of the perfume. Avon then sandwiches this heart onto a peach aldehyde chypre with a chewy oakmoss civet base, adding some galbanum for good measure. The Jontue by Revlon (1976) meets Charlie by Revlon (1973) treatment of the structure grounds this in "grown-up thirty-something" women's perfume of the time, when a lot of people my mother's age would wear something like Jontue or Charlie instead of the softer, sweeter tuberose monsters Giorgio, Arden, or Lauder were all pumping out then; that stuff was aimed at the aforementioned teens who wanted to feel grown-up and independently wealthy, even if their moms still had to fork out for them if they didn't have a summer job. Fast forward decades and it makes an easy grab for vintage chypre lovers, at prices so low that they'll make you chuckle.

Now I'm not saying Pearls & Lace was just for mom; I'm pretty sure plenty of young women wore this in the 1980's too, but keeping in the themes of Avon's own internal releases courting the common buyer/seller of the products (mature women who were often homemakers), and their external designer or celebrity acquisitions courting the more trend-conscious younger buyer willing to spend more cash on fragrance, Pearls & Lace fits the bill perfectly. Alongside others that would come out around the same period such as Pavi Elle by Avon (1983) and Fifth Avenue by Avon (1986), Pearls & Lace feels mostly rooted in the past with only a splash of modernity tacked on; the men's selections of the era would also become increasingly staid as well, meaning dad was the target of those, not his oldest boy, who would cruise the mall for a cologne and not mom's Avon catalog. This is still nice though, a bit anachronistic, and unsurprising. Thumbs up

the first perfume I ever owned. so light and floral with slight powdery notes. perfect for a young girl. I really miss this fragrance!

This was one of my favorites in high school (mid-1980s). It always made me feel very soft and lovely. A very powdery floral. A bit like Anais Anais, but even softer.