Paper Passion
A scent bottled for book lovers
Photograph: Stephen Lenthall
Given February is the month of love, we’re revisiting the Paper Passion Perfume collaboration from 2012 – a romantic endeavour between art-world printer and publisher Gerhard Steidl, master perfumer Geza Schoen and Karl Lagerfeld – to create a scent bottled for book lovers.
The perfume was inspired by a throwaway line by German publisher Gerhard Steidl in the documentary film How to Make a Book with Steidl, which suggested his favourite scent was a 'freshly printed book'. Tony, then editor-in-chief of Wallpaper*, asked him to work with avant-garde perfumer Geza Schoen, founder of Escentric Molecules, to try to bottle that scent. Into the mix came Steidl's friend and long-time collaborator Karl Lagerfeld, who designed the packaging and chose the name Paper Passion.
Schoen worked on capturing the scent and sourcing the necessary ingredients.'It was hard,' he says. 'The smell of printed paper is dry and fatty; they are not notes you often work with.' He eventually managed to create the perfume with just four or five ingredients, including ethyl linoleate and a selection of woody components to add dryness. Most perfumes contain between 20 and 100 ingredients, but Schoen stuck to his vision of simplicity.
Meanwhile, Steidl turned to Lagerfeld for advice on a packaging concept. Lagerfeld instantly visualised a real book with pages and a hidden cut-out compartment to house the perfume bottle in the middle. In the front of the book are short essays on the subject of paper by Lagerfeld, Schoen, German author and artist Günter Grass, and Wallpaper*.
‘Beautiful paper is for me the top of luxury,’ writes Lagerfeld. ‘I am a paper freak. It's a physical passion. I cannot live without paper. Touching perfect paper has something sensuous about it.’
Paper Passion Perfume for Booklovers was available online, in concept stores, bookshops and perfumeries across the world. Now sold out, it remains a collector’s item.
