You'd be forgiven for mistaking Frédéric Malle's Perfume Guns, initially created to scent hotels and other large spaces, for cleansing agents. The 500ml sidewalk-gray bottles seem like chic janitorial supplies—that is, until you smell them. The company describes our favorite scent, Cafe Society as “that ephemeral odor of the living room a few minutes after the end of a Parisian dinner when the guests have just left.” While most Parisian dinner parties we've experienced smell like cigarettes, spilled wine, and too-much fun, this one is all warmth tinged with cooking spices and a lasting woody note that gets better the more you layer it. Forget the room— in the middle of which you are instructed to spritz a small cloud, to diffuse the scent—we're inclined to spray this stuff all over our selves. Unfortunately, the instructions strictly forbid it.

You can get the Frédéric Malle Perfume Gun in Cafe Society here.

Photographs by Elizabeth Brockway.