Scent of a Book
Have you ever been reading a book and found that the description and doesn’t really transport you to the place? An example is a new novel called the Madonna of the almonds which Amazon tells us is a “glorious story of passion, betrayal, warfare and bravery” set in 16th century Tuscany. Now imagine if you are reading this and you weren’t exactly transported back to Renaissance Italy immediately, this used to be a problem, now it turns out, there is a solution.
You can now buy a perfume which has been especially created to capture all of the scents of the text. So what does Renaissance Italy smell like? Is it like Givenchy Eau de Toilette? In this case no, it contains fresh zesty citrus notes of bergamot and lemon, which have been allowed to mingle with floral essences such as almond Blossom, Jasmine and a hint of bitter Armand kernel. These fragrances are counterbalanced by the vanilla and a mix of fruit and spices that is underscored by incense sandalwood and mask. This is what perfume maker Floris says about the specific fragrance for that book
The author has herself blogged that she thought the perfumier had honestly read the book particularly closely and had managed to pick out pretty much every reference to smell in there. So with a glowing reference like that from the author surely this will take off.
This does however remind me of the scratch and sniff T-shirts which were around during the 1990s, but I believe died a death. Will this get the same way? Or will we one day be able to tell them what current book you’re reading by the scent that you are wearing.
Perhaps you found that you miss the smell art a dusty old book; the company produced April Fools’ Day spoof this year which was an aerosol e-book enhancer. It basically contained the smell of old books which you could then spray whilst you were reading and e-book.
Whatever will they think of next?
