Space was tight in the compact, downtown-Manhattan shop where the crowd had gathered. A tiered tower of cookies stood mostly neglected in the corner. The visiting speakers were the main attraction here: Icelandic musician Jónsi (better known as the leader of Sigur Rós), and two of his three sisters, Lilja and Sigurrós (namesake of the band, known as Rosa). Lilja moved to the center of the room, dressed in a long black dress with a white Peter Pan collar, looking, with her long pin-strait hair, like a cheerful, grown-up Wednesday Addams.
“Close your eyes,” she instructed as bookmark-sized strips of scent-soaked paper were passed around the room. “We’re too good at using our eyes and analyzing everything in the world.” Then the story began: “Brand new sneakers, crushing fresh flower stalks against hot asphalt. Mouth full of lemon candy and fingers sticky with motor oil,” she intoned, “Arctic wind blowing through hair in a damp pine forest.” If you’d wandered in off the street, you’d be forgiven for thinking this was an invocation for an experimental new literary magazine, not the launch of a new scent from the siblings’ family-run fragrance company, Fischersund.
Such is the state of perfume today: Everything has a story—one that is often more important than the perfume’s composition or ingredients. The elaborate origin story phenomenon isn’t new, exactly. Chanel No 5., born in the 1920s, was partly inspired not by the floral profusion most people associate with it, but by an icy freshness rising off the frozen rivers and lakes (this observed by the Russian-French nose hired by Gabrielle Chanel when stationed above the Arctic Circle). In the 1990s, Issey Miyake charged the perfumier Jaques Cavalier with interpreting Japanese bathing rituals—iris leaves added to steaming waters, for example, on the holiday of Children’ s Day—a mission that evolved into his famous L’eau D’Issey.
But if perfumiers of the past were drawing on memories and tradition for inspiration, today’s scent-makers are offering far more maximalist narratives. On a blustery day last fall, I met with the elegant perfumer Christopher Sheldrake and Véronique Spoturno, the great-granddaughter of François Spoturno (better known as Coty, the father of modern perfumery) to hear about Spoturno, a company quietly launched in 2021, and which arrived in America last fall. The breezy, brisk Alphée is my favorite of the new scents; it’s inspired by the rocky coast of Corsica, with notes of juniper berry and myrtle leaves, as well as cardamom and coriander. But it is Sportuno’s vision of nautical life, long lazy trips with friends under an azure sky, on a boat also called Alphée—the interior decorated by René Lalique—that really sells it. Véronique gingerly flips through an antique journal de bord written by the French author Paul Morand that includes notes from trips and photographs of the yacht. I spritz the scent on my wrists and feel as though I’m floating on the Tyrrhenian waters for the rest of the day.
The impulse to link scent and story is understandable—perhaps more than any other sense, scent has always been tied to story. We may absorb odors in our nostrils, but the processing takes place deep in the brain, where scent and emotion are deeply entwined. But contemporary fragrances have become so invested in story-telling that they have come to lean on reference points with little connection to things that actually smell. (There is precedent here: Marc Jabob’s Daisy—a popular fragrance launched in 2007 is based on a flower without a strong scent. Lots of scents cite tulips—a flower (mostly) without discernable odor.) Le Labo this January introduced a candle inspired by Japanese indigo dyeing. Frederic Malle’s newest series is based around the idea of “desert gems”—a popular one is called “The Moon.” If you want to smell like an actual rock, jewelry company Mateo has scents based on turquoise, mother of pearl, and malachite.