A fragrance inspires an aromatic tour of Atlanta

What does Atlanta smell like?

Atlanta native Kevin Keller believes he has captured the essence of the city in a bottle.

Keller was an MBA student at Wake Forest University in 2012 when he cofounded the fragrance brand Fulton & Roark. He studied journalism and religion as an undergraduate at Georgia State University, then spent years after graduate school working full-time while developing a fragrance company that relied on American ingenuity rather than European tradition.

The brand launched as a fragrance for men with solid perfumes, an unusual move at the time. The company later developed more traditional offerings — soaps, deodorants and highly concentrated extrait de parfum.

Credit: Fulton & Roark

Credit: Fulton & Roark

Keller recently described Fulton & Roark as a fragrance company for introverts. “We love longevity, and we love the depth that comes with a higher concentration. You get more nuance,” he said in an interview with Beauty Matter.

A shift away from men’s fragrance to unisex scents with no gender labels helped the brand reach a broader audience, including influencers on perfumeTok, TikTok’s community of fragrance enthusiasts.

U.S. spaces and places inspire the scents from Fulton & Roark, and several of the fragrances — Fulton, Blue Ridge, and Cloudland Canyon — have a connection to Georgia.

Keller, as a journalist, likely thought a lot about storytelling when he decided to create a fragrance brand built around places.

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Writers are taught to craft a story using all of our senses, but I admit, I rely heavily on sight and sound when writing. On most days, my sense of smell, touch, and taste are underutilized in my descriptions.

So when I smelled this ode to the city, it awakened an urge to explore Atlanta, not using sight or sound, but smell.

Atlanta, according to Gabriela Chelariu, the Romanian perfumer who developed Fulton, is a place with a woody essence; a blend of amber, vanilla, tea olive, and other exotic-sounding scents. The fragrance, like the city, is described as “complex, magnetic, and truly unique.”

Each Fulton & Roark fragrance has a mood-setting drawing that visually represents the fragrance. For Fulton, the image is “Atlanta from the Ashes,” the bronze sculpture in Woodruff Park, which was a gift from the Rich Foundation in 1969 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Rich’s Department Store.

Credit: Fulton & Roark

That seemed like a good place to start my scent journey. When I mentioned this to a friend, she said, “Woodruff Park smells like urine.”

She’s not wrong. Acrid, ammonia-like, and musty is how I would describe much of the air near the downtown landmark.

A visit to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the world’s busiest airport, which put Atlanta on the international map with 2,500 incoming and outbound flights on any given day, yields a complex scent of kerosene, burning rubber, and heat.

Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com

While driving through Northwest Atlanta, I catch a whiff of what residents in the area have smelled for many years, the pungent odor from the R.M. Clayton Water Treatment plant on Bolton Road, where the city’s wastewater has been treated since the 1930s.

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As the city has continued to grow and the plant has expanded, its operations can leave a distinctive scent that can only be described as the smell of rotten eggs.

At lunchtime, the warm buttery smell of chicken and bread hangs in the air at Chick-fil-A. This smell is so beloved that a running joke in the city is the Original Chicken Sandwich reimagined as a perfume.

Other scents that permeate this foodie town include the smoky blend of garlic, citrus, cumin, and other spices of Sinaloan cuisine along Buford Highway on the north and Moreland Avenue on the south.

There are the savory notes of mac n’ cheese and hints of sulfur and vinegar from collard greens at the city’s historic soul food eateries and the yeasty pine smell of craft beers at the city’s numerous gastropubs.

While roaming streets and spaces sniffing for the scent of Atlanta, I realized just how much the city has changed in the 20 years since I have lived here.

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Keller’s love note describes it as a city that is “ever striving and ever rising.”

Atlanta is always evolving, but the scents I most associate with the city are the ones that have stayed the same — the ones that are closest to home.

A walk through my neighborhood reveals the layered, heady smell of night-blooming jasmine, the sweet citrusy smell of tea olive, and the deep, earthy scent of our tree-lined streets in the hours after it rains.

Credit: Jenni Girtman / Staff

It’s hard to encapsulate the spirit of a city in a bottle, especially a city as complex as Atlanta, but Keller’s love song to the city is a solid reminder of all the grit, glam, grift, and grind that make this place what it is.

Read more on the Real Life blog (www.ajc.com/opinion/real-life-blog/) and find Nedra on Facebook (www.facebook.com/AJCRealLifeColumn) and X (@nrhoneajc) or email her at nedra.rhone@ajc.com.

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