I can't remember the last time I opened a magazine scent strip for a sniff, not since I came to realise that they all smell the same. An unpleasant smell, in fact, which, once exposed to the air, meant I had to hold the magazine at a certain distance to read. In any case, as any perfume enthusiast will tell you, the various facets of a perfume can only be fully appreciated dabbed or sprayed onto skin.

I'm only surprised, therefore, that it's taken this long for somebody to come up with a way to put a proper perfume sample in a magazine. Valois has created Imagin, which is a completely flat sample you can actually spray from. The bad news (if you're a perfume snob like me) is that Estée Lauder has an exclusive one-year deal with Valois for the use of Imagin in magazines.

See the press release for Imagin here. Via Now Smell This.