Have you stayed at the Armani Hotel in Milan lately? Have you whiffed the air in the lobby? One Hollywood producer who just returned from a trip says she practically needed a hazmat suit to circumvent the fragrance cloud she encountered while checking in. “It was awful,” she says, scrunching her nose. “It was like they were trying to baptize us in it.”
Of course, you don’t have to travel all the way to Milan to discover that high-end hotels have long been pumping perfumes into their public spaces, sometimes with pleasant results, sometimes not. But the trend has lately been expanding well beyond hotels. Indeed, these days, you can’t shop in a mall or gamble in a casino or even venture to a ballgame without being smacked by a blast of some impossible-to-ignore aroma. It’s all part of the olfactory branding craze that has been sweeping the globe, with businesses from banks to boutiques sniffing out new ways to make dollars out of scents.
“Scent is the greatest memory connector, so it is not surprising that hotels and other businesses want to create a lasting memory through scent and strengthen brand recognition,” says Veronique Gabai, a former top executive at Estée Lauder and Vera Wang and now founder of her own perfume brand. “Scent can enchant and transport, but too much can become disruptive to the overall experience.”
The basic idea goes back to the 1960s, when Disney started pumping smells into its theme parks, even patenting its own odor-making machine, the Smellitzer. They’re still at it today, with the scent of popcorn and cookies filling Main Street, USA. Through the 1980s and ’90s, department stores also were pioneers in environmental aromatics, though not entirely on purpose. “Fragrance models” would stand at the entrances and spray perfumes at unsuspecting customers as they walked in the door. Enough people complained that the practice mostly has disappeared.
Famous fashion houses like Chanel, Gucci and Prada have earned billions over the decades marketing their perfumes to aspirational consumers (as have celebrities from Britney Spears to Derek Jeter). But as diffusers and candles have grown in popularity, the trend has started to come home. Why stop at a dab on your wrist when your whole house can smell like Chanel No. 5?
Nowadays, atmospheric scents are everywhere, from sports arenas (like AT&T Stadium in Texas, which uses “covert ambient scenting” to pump caramel and cotton candy smells through its air ducts) to Las Vegas casinos (MGM fills its gaming rooms with “Asian Garden,” a floral with notes of vanilla designed to keep gamblers calm even while losing their shirts) to public transportation. Both Tokyo and Seoul blast riders with artificial freshness to make commuting a little less pungent. Those motoring to work in a Rolls-Royce aren’t being left out, either. The luxury car company recently hired perfumer Julian Bedel to create a fragrance for its vehicles (dispensed via the car’s patented scent-diffuser system).
The olfactory obsession has more and more businesses racing to market takeout versions of their signature scents. Like the way Bird Streets smells? For $40, you can purchase the same candles the tony West Hollywood private club burns in its lobby. A slew of luxe hotels — Four Seasons, Ritz Carlton, W — peddle scented candles and diffusers so you can replicate the scents of their lobbies in your living room. Or you can take a relaxing bath with candles that smell like Buck Mason, HD Buttercup or LL Bean.
Knockoff brands also are becoming common. One company, Hotel Collection, is peddling scents “inspired by” such precise destinations as the Delano in Miami Beach, Nobu Malibu and the Mandarin Oriental in Hong Kong. Less ritzy destinations also are beginning to cash in on the craze. Fragrance maker Homesick is offering a collection of scents that includes a candle that supposedly smells like Dodger Stadium. And not long ago, the Hollywood Sign released its own official body fragrance that supposedly makes you smell like the 100-year-old landmark.
Can Eau de 405 be far behind?
This story appeared in the March 19 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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