18 July 2012

A Perfume Evoking the Scent of a Freshly Printed Book


We all gravitate towards smells that might not be considered, “classically beautiful” in the perfumery lexicon. For some people it’s the smell of an old leather armchair. For others it might be petrol, or the smell of wet pavement. For German publisher Gerhard Steidl, it was the scent of a “freshly printed book.”
This remark at a Wallpaper magazine party led to a collaboration between perfumer Geze Schoen, Karl Lagerfeld, and Steidl that created the just released “Paper Passion”, a perfume meant to smell like a freshly printed book. Lagerfeld has designed the packaging, housing it inside a real book with the pages cut out so the bottle can nestle within. The pages are printed with essays on paper from the likes of Gunter Grass, Lagerfeld, and Wallpaper editor-in-chief Tony Chambers.
Apparently designing a book perfume was almost as challenging as writing a book itself. They wanted to keep the ingredients to four or five components, which made it even more difficult. Explains Schoen, ““The smell of printed paper is dry and fatty; they are not notes you often work with.”
Paper Passion is a phenomenal idea as a concept scent and a perfect present for any sensual bibliophiles you might have had a hard time picking out that unique something for. It is now available in concept stores, online, and in bookshops and perfumeries.

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