In the Financial Times, "The Subtle Art of Selling Hope in a Bottle" looks at Elizabeth Arden's success in the celebrity perfume arena.
In the New York Sun, an article about Bond no. 9 Fire Island: "If you can't be tan, you can smell like you are". Read it here (link no longer working, sorry).
In the Los Angeles Times, an article about the growing use of perfume in hotels.
Harry Slatkin of Slatkin & Co has a sensitive nose:
We all know what it's like to be downwind from the lady at the opera who slathered too much tuberose on herself before the performance. You feel as if you're going to pass out.
Welcome to my world.
My defense is a long scarf and a bottle of Black Fig and Absinthe, a licorice-hinted fragrance that I created. I spray the scarf and cover myself with it while I'm on a plane or in a cab.
Read the rest of the article at the New York Times.
A reality show about perfume? It was bound to happen eventually…
Last year saw a chocolate-scented premiere of Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, but now movie-goers in Japan will experience fragranced entertainment on a new level:
A new service from a major telecommunications company, NTT Communications Corp., will synchronize seven different smells to parts of "The New World," starring Colin Farrell.
A floral scent accompanies a love scene, while a mix of peppermint and rosemary is emitted during a tear-jerking scene. Joy is a citrus mix of orange and grapefruit, while anger is enhanced by a herb-like concoction with a hint of eucalyptus and tea tree.
Read more at MSNBC.
The UK Times has announced the winners of the Sunday Times Style Beauty Awards: Stella by Stella McCartney won the award for the best fragrance, Lovely by Sarah Jessica Parker is the best new fragrance.
The New York Times has an article on the growing trend of fragranced hotel lobbies and guest rooms; the Kansas City Star has a feature (link no working, sorry!) on custom scents for cars.
I read recently in Luxist that the Westin Hotel chain is using magazine scent strips to advertise their new signature scent: “White Tea. The Calming New Scent of Westin”, which according to Brandweek will be “faintly wafting this spring in Westin properties worldwide”. Sure enough, there is a strip in my latest New Yorker. It smells vaguely like a cross between Bvlgari's Green tea and White tea fragrances, and I would venture to guess that it isn't all that different from the lemongrass and green tea fragrance used at Omni hotels. More hotel scenting news:
Hard Rock Hotel's lobby in Orlando has “Ocean” scent, and the hotel draws visitors to the ice cream store on the ground level by blasting a “`Waffle Cone”' scent up the stairway. (via Washington Post)
A brief perusal of Scentair's website (Scentair produces the scenting systems that make all this public fragrancing possible) reveals several other interesting uses of fragrance as a marketing tool…