What Does Pretentiousness Smell Like?

A perfume has been launched that makes wearers smell like “freshly printed books.” Paper Passion is a fragrance by Geza Schoen in association with publisher Gerhard Steidl and iconic design mag WallPaper*. Karl Lagerfeld and Steidl provide packaging.

“The smell of a freshly printed book is the best smell in the world,” says Karl Lagerfeld. Lagerfeld apparently elerted Steidl to the importance of book smell. WallPaper* got in on the “natural pairing” of publisher and perfumer and commissioned master perfumer Schoen to create the scent to be part of their Handmade 2012 exhibition in Milan.

The marketing spiel is a triumph of vacuity: “This is an opportunity to celebrate all the gloriosensuality [sic] of books, at a time when many in the industry are turning against them. The idea is that is should relax you, like when you read a book, to a level of meditation and concentration. Paper Passion has evolved into something quite beautiful and unique. To wear the smell of a book is something very chic. Books are players in the intellectual world, but also in the world of luxury.”

Lagerfeld, Schoen, Günter Grassand and Tony Chambers provide textual accompaniment to the smell.

“You have a book, you open it, there’s a bottle inside and it smells of a book. It might be quirky, but the idea has a simplicity, a linearity,” says smellmaker Schoen.

Via Boing Boing