Queen's Gold
Avon (1975)

Here is another recommendation from the Scented Devil himself—again, refer to his review below. I agree with him that does channel the Bernard Chant signature of aldehydes, galbanum, herbaceous core, and plangent, spicy-green flowers, somewhere between his Estée and Aliage. There is that ambery "Avonade" in its base which is always a pleasure as far as I am concerned. If it were not associated with unfairly mocked and maligned MLM brand, this would likely be a highly-coveted vintage.

Queen's Gold by Avon (1975) is a little-known entry into the 1970's oeuvre of feminine-market Avon fragrances, and from what I can tell, was never re-issued beyond the decade as most were. Smell-wise this is an aldehyde chypre with a big chewy green core and an almost-oriental ambery base under it that contrasts the green notes; a sort of mash-up between Avon Timeless (1974) and Avon Occur (1966), but not exactly that to be sure. If you own both of those and try layering them, you still won't quite get close to what Queen's Gold is compositionally, that's just as close to it as I can get you with words. Queen's Gold escaped me until a friend of mine send me an old demonstration sampler Avon ladies used containing a dram.

Fans of classic Estée Lauder will undoubtedly enjoy this, as it feels like whoever anonymous perfumer cutting their teeth in the labs was channeling Bernard Chant when they worked on Queen's Gold. The classic aliphatic aldehydes like much of Chant's work, backed up into galbanum and rose, carnation, jasmine, geranium, and oakmoss. There's some costus and vetiver here, chewy herbal materials and Avon's patent amber underneath it all, smoothing and rounding. Without the Avon name attached, this would be some overpriced, highly-sought after trophy in vintage fragrance circles in it's long discontinuation. Performance is pretty good, as everything about Queen's Gold is rather tenacious past the aldehydes. I find it pretty unisex too.

The glut of this stuff on the aftermarket, unopened and unused, tells me Queen's Gold sold horribly; there's even more of it on Ebay than the usual suspects like Charisma by Avon (1970), or Ariane by Avon (1977), fragrances that clutter the aftermarket for the opposite reason from Queen's Gold, in that they sold so well many Avon reps optimistically over-ordered them before their own personal financial bubble burst. Avon is, despite how delightful of a cheap and cheerful perfume house it may be, still a multi-level marketing scheme, and only two clicks away from being a pyramid scam; many women thinking they'd be self-made entrepreneurs found this out too late, which is why all this vintage Avon exists 50+ years later in the first place. Queen's Gold is an easy like for me. Thumbs up.