Scenting a Book Fair, Part 1

There’s a book fair for local authors coming up in May, and I’ll be there with stacks of my cozy mysteries, Killer Sillage and Savage Gourmand. Since my stories are set in a perfume store, I thought I'd bring a bit of that atmosphere to the table. And no, I’m not going to attack people with atomizers. I’m thinking smaller: pre-sprayed blotters that a customer can pick up and sniff, or not.

I thought that finding a scent for Killer Sillage would be the easy part. The central fragrance, Lycoctonum, is all dark roses, damp green things, and a bit of leather. It’s moody, elegant, and solvable. There has to be something out there already that would fit the bill. Right? Right?

Savage Gourmand seemed like it could be far more difficult to scent. Not that there's any shortage of gourmand fragrances on the market at the moment, but I wanted something specific. In the book, there’s a recurring scent called Queen of Dreams, which is supposed to evoke kouign-amann, that buttery, caramelized crown of laminated dough originally from Breton. In my thirty-ish years of fragrance collecting experience, I've encountered few gourmand scents that actually smell like pastry. Oh, sure, there are plenty of vanilla cupcake and roasted marshmallow clones out there in perfume-world, but how many of them also have the essential bready, yeasty quality that actual pastries possess? Um, none? At least none that I've encountered.

While I already have a ridiculous collection of perfumes and samples, including those with the rose, leather, green, and gourmand notes I would need to create my book fair scents, I thought I would also ask for expert opinions. First, I wrote to Sean Colbert, founder and perfumer of Buchart Colbert, a US-based fragrance house that has six very lovely fragrances (which I wrote about here). He responded that while gourmands weren't his field of expertise, he did have some suggestions for Lycoctonum. 

I also requested a perfume prescription from the lovely fragrance mavens from the On the Scent podcast, Suzy Nightingale and Nicola Bonn. They quickly put together a list of candidates for both Queen of Dreams and Lycoctonum. 

Once I had their lists, I ordered samples from Scent Split and Surrender to Chance, and a couple of roll-on perfume oils from Demeter. 

 

This was going to be easy. Right? 

Stay tuned!

-----------------------
Posted by theminx on Minxstinks
Note: this post is my opinion. I am not affiliated with the companies mentioned in this post or any other companies.