We’ve Never Smelled a Book Like This
If you remember the stacks in your university’s library, the quiet floors of bookshelves probably smelled like, well, a book: some combination of glue, freshly-printed pages straight off the press, ink, mildew, yellowing inside covers, browning paper… This is all to say that the mental picture we have in our heads when one says “book” isn’t far off from the inspiration behind Commodity’s cologne called Book. Ketrin Leka, Master Perfumer at Commodity, says that "Book takes you into the New York Public Library to recapture the experience of yesterday: turning the pages and breathing in the smell of dry paper mingling in with the open fresh air." Except the cologne doesn’t smell at all like that. Instead i
t’s a woody, complex blend that skews on the side of fresh rather than warm, sticky, and spicy a la pomander balls or cinnamon pinecones. When we put it on, we immediately noticed the top note of cedarwood. While many colognes include it, what’s different here is how front and center and enduring it is: rather than be too weak or compete with other notes, we felt like we were walking through soggy woods after it rained or had just hewed a cedar tree. As the day wore on and the
top notes evaporated, its base note of sandalwood became present. Yet unlike sandalwood’s overuse in a lot of fragrances which can overpower the whole thing making it smell almost oud-y, this was kept in check by the cedar: we felt it was a 60/40 split.
Though technically it’s a winter scent (Commodity says it’s part of the Black Collection whose scents are “dark, moody and intense”), it’s kind of like saying you can’t wear white after Labor Day: wear whatever you want, whenever you want. Heady and rich, when we put it on, we felt like perfectly-tailored Taron Egerton in Kingsman: The Secret Service, and who wouldn’t want to feel that way all the time?!
Put this on your birthday or Christmas list. Or just buy it for yourself any day of the year as a splurge.
