Avon
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
Citrus and spice collide violently—mandarin and bergamot bright against black pepper's aggressive bite, with ginger adding warmth and thyme introducing herbaceous restraint. Within moments, the composition feels almost savoury, as though you've walked through a spice market in autumn.
The fragrance deepens considerably as nutmeg and absinth emerge, creating a genuinely unpleasant beauty—honeyed spice warring with bitter anise. Red pepper sharpens the profile whilst iris pallida contributes a leathery, slightly violet quality, and that mysterious carcass note adds flesh and shadow, pulling the composition toward something unsettling rather than comforting.
The resinous base dominates—cashmere wood, myrrh, frankincense, and that peculiar putridity note coalesce into something austere and almost ecclesiastical. Musk and amber provide warmth without resolution, creating a lingering meditation on spice-tinged wood and incense smoke rather than a conventional fragrance conclusion.
Hobnail Bell – Unforgettable arrives as a contradictory proposition: a unisex spice market wrapped in ecclesiastical incense, all housed within an Avon bottle. Mark Buxton has constructed something genuinely unusual here, a fragrance that pivots on the tension between culinary warmth and austere resinosity.
The opening assault is aggressively peppery—black pepper and ginger announce themselves with almost aggressive vigour against the cooler brightness of mandarin and bergamot. But this isn't a cheerful citrus-spice; thyme creeps in, herbaceous and slightly medicinal, warning you that comfort isn't the objective. The heart reveals Buxton's true ambition: nutmeg and absinth create a genuinely unsettling duality, one suggesting mulled wine, the other evoking absinthe's anise-tinged bitterness. Red pepper adds sharp acidity, whilst iris pallida—that leathery, violet-tinged floral—prevents this from descending into kitchen-cabinet territory.
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