Atlanta always tries to look its best, especially when company is coming for a big event, whether it’s this summer’s baseball All-Star Game or FIFA World Cup in 2026. Now the city — or at least its citizens — can smell nice, too, since Atlanta has joined other major American and international destinations with its own fragrance.
City-specific perfumes are a hot trend, a confirmation that a metropolis is fashionable, going places, getting somewhere. In the fragrance business, however, it turns out that the literal scent of a city is not the name of the game. Instead, a layered, complex perfume that evokes a feeling of place is the perfumer’s goal.
At least it is for former Atlantan Kevin Keller, who crafted the new extrait de parfum, Fulton, for his North Carolina perfume house Fulton & Roark as a kind of mash note to the city he loved and left.
The number of perfumers who have delved into place-based perfumes just keeps growing.
The French luxury candlemaker Diptyque creates fragrant candles named after cities, including London, Berlin, Miami and Beverly Hills. And perfume house Bond No. 9 presents itself as an “olfactory love letter to New York City,” with scents created for Madison Avenue, Greenwich Village, Wall Street and Central Park.