I Hate Perfume

With few exceptions, the above statement applies to me. It also applies to parfumier Christopher Brosius, who in fact has a store called CB I Hate Perfume . Arts & Letters Daily linked to a story by Jessica Gallucci about Christopher and his interesting collection of scents—Wet Pavement, Roast Beef, Burning Leaves, In the Library, and At the Beach 1966, to name a few. That last one Christopher describes as “Coppertone 1967 blended with a new accord I created especially for this perfume—North Atlantic. The base of the scent contains a bit of Wet Sand, Seashell, Driftwood and just a hint of Boardwalk.”

While I dislike many perfumes, I certainly do like the smell of the rich earth and clean air in a forest, or the sea breeze blowing over seashells and wet sand. Or the scent of old paper, wood paneling, leather furniture, and pipe smoke that I imagine something called In the Library would convey. The fact that someone has decided to capture these scents—and done so quite well, according to Gallucci—is interesting indeed.

More interesting would be the potential such smells might have to resurrect forgotten memories. Gallucci visited the store with her parents, and her father, like many a man dragged perfume shopping, sat in the corner brimming with disinterest. Yet when she brought him a vial of At the Beach 1966, she writes, “With an upward roll of the eyes, he inhaled. Then he took the sample from my hand, sniffed again and nearly leapt to his feet: the scent had triggered a memory of summers he spent lifeguarding on Long Island as a teenager.”

The store sounds like a Proustian bakery filled with a hundred petite madeleines, an olfactory photo album of sorts. In other words an interesting way to spend a Saturday afternoon in New York.