The Ephemera Archive is a new series where I explore the history and significance of forgotten objects.
Magazine perfume tester strips have always felt a bit out of place. The invisibility of scent is the precise thing that makes perfume alluring, yet nearly impossible to market in any direct fashion. Perfumes are only as good as they are elusive, and unfortunately for cosmetics advertisers, these strips make them undeniably common.
Perfumed ink was first produced in 1940, according to a Popular Science feature from April of that year, but it wasn’t until the 1980s that the strips took off. This was following the late seventies’ scratch-and-sniff boom, another memorable scent experience that relied on the same scientific technique.
By the time perfume tester strips were common, they were inescapable. At a certain point Vogue had to put an informal limit on three perfume samplers per issue, according to an ‘88 New York Times article. At the same point, Chanel refused to include a sample in a magazine unless they were the only designer offering them in that issue.
Despite the steep extra costs associated with the strips, even when they were still new and novel, consumers didn’t seem to derive much from them. Soon magazines were fielding notes and calls from peeved subscribers, forcing them to offer insert-free issues as an alternative to those who found the smells offensive.
“A very noxious and pervacious [sic] odor invaded this house with the mail today,” wrote Franklin Heller of Stamford, Conn., to The New Yorker last June. “Much to our surprise, it came from the arriving copy of The New Yorker.”
Certainly there are perfume samplers haunting the magazine racks of the local drugstore to this day, but with the wilting of the print industry, it seems unlikely that they’re still causing quite the stir that they did in decades prior. For this, I’m personally thankful — a couple of years ago I developed a perfume allergy that would leave me with hives if I came close to the scented Harpers Bazaars of my youth.