A Unisex Fragrance That Smells Like Old Books, Created by a Portland Bookstore
Powell’s City of Books released the perfume Powell’s by Powell’s after the pandemic forced its temporary closure.
By Brian Libby
January 9, 2021
2 minute read
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The poster child for the gray-skyed Pacific Northwest, Portland is perhaps America’s most book-loving city. Reading is a perfect rainy-day activity, after all, so it makes sense that the town is home to one of the world’s largest independent bookstores: the four-story, block-long Powell’s City of Books. When the pandemic forced its temporary closure last year (the space has since partially reopened), the retailer was surprised to discover, through customer surveys, that what its patrons missed most wasn’t the books themselves. It was the bookstore’s smell.
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