There's much to celebrate about Chandler Burr's recent piece on creating a new perfume for Hermes. My own favorite part is near the beginning:

Most perfume houses are based in France, and, as a result, the French dominate the industry. It is an insular and secretive business that remains governed by the solemn idea of the “purity of art.” This is spoken of with equal parts pride and cynicism. “French perfumers come from the Sixteenth Arrondissement, and they all have degrees in poetry and commerce from some chic school,” one Parisian perfume executive told me.

Why didn't my chic poetry school have commerce classes? I knew I got fleeced there somehow. The accompanying archive piece from 1930, "Perfume and Politics" by Hippolyta (! if I once knew who this was, I've forgotten), is equally fascinating and pleasingly purple. For example:

Racial female taste furnishes quaint statistics; for instance, American women like middling-passionate fantasy odors and no posy smells, whereas the chillier, land-loving British dames require only the chastest invented odors and pure garden bouquets. Blunt amber and heliotrope, most passionate of beast and blossom odors, intoxicate all the Spanish-speaking senoritas. Amber and rose in their rarest forms, considered by perfumers to be the peak of their art, please the French.

Fantasy odors and posy smells pretty much sums up most fashion magazines, or The New Yorker during the Dark Ages of Tina. No longer, of course—scented issues are out with skeleton fashion layouts (it's hard to say that without implying I'm talking about models, but remember that spread? Scarring). But wait, they're still in the magazine, at least in words. On the penultimate page (just before "The Back Page")—tucked within the Conde Nast information and the warning that the magazine is not responsible for damage "or any other injury" to your cowering unsolicited manuscripts and artwork—is this notice: "To receive your issues without scent strips, please e-mail scentfree[@]newyorker.com." Hey, may I request my issues without the beastly whiff of Caitlin Flanagan or poems by John Updike? And may I have double the pure garden bouquet of contributions by Nancy Franklin, Donald Antrim, Lorrie Moore, Steve Martin, Wislawa Szymborska, and John Lahr? Hooray!

I'm not against perfume in magazines—I usually find a way to use it—but those pages are too often that overthick paper that gets in the way of efficient page-turning. Since ad inserts insist on annoying and interrupting us, I prefer those that have a present as a reward: beauty magazines' tiny foundation samples, the real silk scarves and Christmas cards that used to come in Interview. Imagine a nearly flat vial of spring water or liqueur somehow tucked into the pages, or a tiny new candy. (I'm finally reading Hilary Liftin's delightful Candy and Me: A Girl's Tale of Life, Love, and Sugar.) I suggested to Paul Newman when I met him at the offices of The Nation years ago that he find a way to include samples of his popcorn and salad dressing within the magazine. It hasn't happened yet, but who can deny the power of a bit of flavor?

The Scent of the Nile [New Yorker]
Perfume and Politics [New Yorker, 1930]
More perfume reading from the New Yorker [Now Smell This]