Summary

Clear glass Avon perfume bottle with gold plastic lid. Part of a collection from a Melbourne donor.

Physical Description

Clear glass perfume bottle, tear shaped, with gold plastic lid.

Significance

'Avon calling' - This catchphrase was formerly the verbal marketing tag of the Avon company. It was well known throughout Australia from 1964 when Avon began selling here using the same techniques that had made it hugely successful in the USA. Indeed, as a focused cosmetics manufacturer from 1886, the California Perfume Company company was remarkably consistent in terms of product. It is its marketing techniques that have changed, mostly to suit the changing economic and social world of Western women. Basically, women have acted as independent selling agents who have required little capital to establish themselves.

Initially, most sales were conducted door-to-door, but increasingly the products were sold at work. The internet is now an important medium for sales.

Apart from its significance as a collection in its own right, this collection conveys in a most vivid and colourful way that some women gained a degree of economic independence and empowerment via the global growth of a trans-national US company.

The collection is also significant in terms of the packaging design and the consumption patterns that were attached to particular brand-types.

Our information comes from her friends who do not know why the donor chose to collect Avon bottles, similarly tea towels. Apparently the donor acquired these bottles over many years. Some of the bottles were acquired new and then used until empty, others were acquired empty solely as additions to her collection.

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