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Welcome to Back of the Napkin, musings from Serviette for the cultured world.
Smells—they’re all around! Though they often fade into the background—even the most foul grow feeble the longer they are present, a phenomenon known as olfactory adaptation—their absence would likely be more than just a little unsettling. Of course, fragrance can be used as an accessory, a way of setting one’s mood and projecting a set of aesthetic sensibilities to the world. But what of the scents that make up our environment?
I grew up against the sweeping backdrop of the Canadian Rocky mountains, scented by the crisp alpine air, resinous fir trees, and native flowers poking out from underneath blankets of freshly fallen snow (an image which would later inspire Serviette’s prized icy solar floral, Frisson D’Hiver). For a long time, scent seemed to me an extension of the natural world, a reflection of the splendor of my surrounding environment. It wasn’t until I experienced city living that I was unexpectedly struck by how different the olfactory landscape can be. A corollary for the hotel lobby-inclined: here is a feature I wrote about how hotels get their signature lobby scent.
In these environments, within liminal spaces especially, scent is more commonly wielded as a tool of subtle manipulation, usually with the end goal of selling a particular product or experience. This is known as scent branding. It was no longer a pleasant byproduct of the environment, but a preordained symbol meant to convey a certain image or aesthetic. The Betsy Hotel on South Beach has a lobby smell that I find myself thinking about with suspicious regularity.
There have been concerted efforts to enhance or reimagine an experience via the olfactory in both likely and unlikely places. Serviette’s personal favorite is doubtlessly “smell-o-vision,” a short-lived but ambitious technology that emitted odors via a system of movie theater vents during corresponding scenes of a film: lilac perfume, for instance, accompanied a 1929 screening of Lilac Time. John Waters later adapted this practice for more contemporary audiences through the use of “Odorama” cards—released alongside his cult classic 1989 film Polyester, the scratch-n-sniff cards included aromas ranging from “roses” and “new car smell” to “smelly shoes.” (Such a feat could’ve only been accomplished by the man William Burroughs lovingly dubbed the “filth elder.”)
Serviette firmly believes in scent’s capacity to not only transform a moment, but to reframe the environment in which that moment takes place—to render the familiar newly legible, or at the very least, newly considered. If scent branding scripts the air around us, then why not intervene? We include an embroidered handkerchief with each purchase as a small, portable counterpoint: a way of carrying one’s own atmosphere into spaces that might otherwise decide it for you.
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