Paper Passion: Perfume Makes You Smell Like An Old Book

Paper Passion Fragrance Helps You Smell Like An Old Book

Just admit it. We've all opened up that old book with the worn spine and discolored pages, then stuck our nose in it and inhaled deeply.

The smell is mysterious -- strange to some, pleasurable to others. For those really in love with this distinct and unique smell, a new perfume bottles it up so you can take the fragrance everywhere.

A new scent called Paper Passion, recently featured on Fastco Design, is looking to remind e-reader users and book lovers everywhere of the beautiful smell of old pages and glue.

The idea for Paper Passion began when German publisher Gerhard Steidl commented that his favorite scent was "a freshly printed book" at the Wallpaper Handmade exhibition in Milan. From there, Wallpaper Magazine commissioned famed perfumer Geza Schoen to find a way to bottle the indescribable smell.

For Schoen, minimalism was key in achieving the scent. Though most perfumes consist of 100-plus ingredients, Paper Passion features only five woody ingredients. "The smell of printed paper is dry and fatty; they are not notes you often work with," Schoen told the New York Daily News. Fittingly, the perfume comes packaged in a white-bound book with pages cut out to hold the bottle. Its release is timed with the Handmade issue of Wallpaper, out on July 11, and will retail for $98.

Paper Passion is the latest attempt by fragrance makers to bottle up strange scents. Scents of Departure lets users smell like 17 different cities around the world, while the BLOOD Concept puts together fragrances based on different blood types.

Perfumers have even managed to bottle up that new car smell. As long as they don't get any bright ideas from Paper Passion -- we don't want to know what an old car perfume will smell like.

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