Palo santo is an unusual material. While it has an appealing scent, its pure form doesn’t strike me as something that would work in a personal fragrance. Sandalwood, cedarwood, and even oud have qualities that seem harmonious with human skin, but palo santo has this odd dill-pickle edge that dominates my olfactory experience, making it difficult to picture as a wearable scent. Commodity, however, changed my perspective.
Book is a fragrance containing a palo santo note that feels approachable, and I think it smells fantastic. Interestingly, Commodity doesn’t list palo santo in its note pyramid, and for the first few hours, you might not detect it. By the third or fourth hour, though, it subtly emerges, supporting the drier, “fresh” aromatics that came before. Book strives to recreate the experience of turning a dusty page. It’s a conceptual fragrance that evokes the scent of inky, well-loved paper, and I believe it succeeds. Book smells beautiful.
Yet, it raises the question: would I want to smell like an old, dusty book? This is where the niche factor enters: fragrances like this appeal only to a small subset of aficionados who yearn for the ambiance of an antique bookshop, surrounded by shelves of calfskin and vellum. Notes almost feel irrelevant here; Book simply smells like a book. Anyone who loves books enough to want to wear their scent will find joy in it.