I’d like my home to smell like a reader’s home. Not like a person who skims Substacks or chooses books as set dressing, but someone who has actually read W. G. Sebald, in the bath, while the water turns cold.
The domestic aspiration isn’t spa-like calm, or a Tuscan vineyard, or whatever Byredo thinks a library smells like. I want a home that smells like someone who owns a very nice pen. Someone who lights a candle because they prefer vetiver to default “fresh linen.” A person who doesn’t have Wi-Fi in their writing room. (They say “writing room.”)
