Smoke signals

Welcome to Back of the Napkin, musings from Serviette for the cultured world. Spraying Byronic Hero, it has been proclaimed, is somewhat akin to “smoking the wrong end of a cigarette.” While that sensation was never intended, it’s a preternatural fascination among many in the fragrance community to smell like one has just burned through a Virginia Slim. From Haloscope’s Audrey Robinovitz: “Wear Byronic Hero to the club, and let its distinct and unflinching sillage start conversations as easily as it frightens asthmatics.” Such reactions suggest that smoke, even in abstraction, remains a potent social signal.

This may help explain why, at the time of writing, another alarmist biannual declaration that “cigarettes are back!” has once again been published. (The last time this occurred may have been June of last year, per The New York Times; or maybe December. Or was it January of this year?) The Vanity Fair Oscar party deployed trays of cigarettes like period-correct props. Sarah Pidgeon's Carolyn Bessette Kennedy takes long, practiced drags while moving through JFK Jr.'s apartment in Ryan Murphy's Love Story, and Hudson Williams, wherever he is photographed, appears to be in the process of lighting one.

While Serviette does not condone the use of tobacco, there is some interesting science behind the use of cigarettes and smell. Naturally thought to cause anosmia (the partial or total loss of smell), smoking actually has a different affect to our olfactory system than one might expect. According to Scent and Chemistry, some scent molecules are weaker and not as easy to smell—like certain steroids, eugenol (found in cloves), and sulfur-containing compounds. Others come across as much stronger for smokers, such as musks and banana odorants. (Beauty and market analysts show sharp spikes in “banana perfume” searches and launches between 2022 and 2025. Coincidence?)

Smoking and fragrance have had a curious relationship, especially in the fragrant molecules used to mimic the smell of smoke. Some natural materials, like vetiver oil, call to mind cigarettes because of their former use in scenting them. The classic Habanita by Molinard (1921), mixes a soft vanilla base with about 5.2% smoky vetiver oil for contrast, and was first used to perfume cigarettes.

Alas, what is behind the desire to smell like a smoker? As published in one scientific study, a wish to smell like a smoker (cigarettes, ashtray, stale smoke) without actually smoking is usually about meaning and memory, not about nicotine itself. It sits at the intersection of olfactory nostalgia, identity performance, and the aestheticization of “damage” or transgression in scent.

If one’s formative experiences—of intimacy, of nightlife, of sharing an embarrassing anecdote with a stranger—were conducted beneath a haze of cigarette smoke: lovers, clubs, rehearsal spaces, queer bars, art school studios at some godforsaken hour—then “smoker” becomes less a scent than an emotional address. The body remembers the room, even when the lungs have long since made their peace with cleaner air.

That’s all from us.