I normally avoid midtown Manhattan between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, because the tourist crowds overwhelm me and make me feel Grinch-y and Scrooge-y and other ways I don’t really want to feel during the holiday season. This year, however, I bent the rules slightly and headed straight towards the center of town on November 30. I wanted to see the Ed Ruscha exhibition at MoMA, Saks was hosting a rare promotional event for one of my favorite makeup brands, I needed a haircut and—last but not least—I wanted to smell the official holiday scent of Fifth Avenue.

How does Fifth Avenue smell during the Christmas season? Drawing on my own memories and experiences from childhood onwards, I would say that midtown Manhattan in December is an aromatic blend of chestnuts being roasted (and slightly burned) on hot-dog carts, bus exhaust fumes mingling with cold air, the pine-y notes of evergreen branches hung around shop windows and Christmas trees being sold on a corner, the earthy (to put it nicely) scent of the horses waiting with their carriages on Grand Army Plaza, and whatever two or three perfumes are most popular that year, trailing off shoppers’ coats and cuffs.

Apparently, this naturally occurring assortment of smells just isn’t enough.

From November 20^th – January 4^th, Fifth Avenue’s lighted holiday tree displays along the sidewalks will scent the streets with NEST’s Holiday fragrance as residents and visitors alike shop and enjoy the sights. This is the first-ever scented collaboration for Fifth Avenue, who purposefully sought out an iconic New York-based and female-founded brand like NEST New York to provide an elevated experience for New Yorkers and shoppers from around the globe.

“Innovative brand collaborations are central to The Fifth Avenue Association’s mission to make every visit to our corridor elegant and exceptional,” shares Marie Boster, President, Fifth Avenue Association. “Fifth Avenue is the premier home of holiday magic in New York City and attracts visitors far and wide to take in the sights and sounds and, this year, the wonderful scent of NEST Holiday.”

(via PR Newswire)

Got that? Let’s take it element by element. Here’s one of the fifty Fifth Avenue Association planters placed along Fifth between 46th Street and 61st Street. Normally, I wouldn’t even notice them. But it’s always nice to have a little extra greenery in the city, and this time I stopped to take visual and olfactory notes.

I have to say, these planters are a little less refined than I’d expect, with their strings of lights clumsily mashed into the branches. I know, these are large pieces, and there are dozens of them, and maybe the effect is more elegant at night. Still.

The trees do have a pleasing fragrance of their own. However, you’re not here to enjoy that, you’re here for a more “elevated experience.”

If you stand still next to one of these planters while you’re waiting to cross the street, for example, or you happen to be passing one when a breeze is blowing, you’ll catch the new seasonal scent of Fifth Avenue. If you look for the source of that smell, you might notice ends of transparent tubing poking out of the branches and emitting intermittent puffs of vapor. (There’s one at the center of the photo above. I can’t figure out how to upload a video to my very basic WordPress account, but I did capture it in action.)

During my visit to Fifth Ave., most people on the sidewalk didn’t seem particularly aware of the targeted scent. They were much more preoccupied with the density of the crowds and their need to figure out their next destination (which way to the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center? where should we eat lunch?).

If they happened to pause near one of the planters labeled with this tag, however, they noticed the tube (more visible in the photo above), saw the puff of mist, and connected all the sensorial dots. Reactions seemed to vary from “oh, that’s the good thing we’ve been smelling” to “oh, that’s what’s been making me sneeze.” I didn’t see anyone take advantage of the QR code, but maybe I didn’t wait long enough.

A nearby store was, in fact, selling the very scent we were all encountering. In front of Bergdorf Goodman, a brand ambassador was standing with a bicycle-cart loaded with NEST candles in the brand’s signature Holiday blend—the same aroma being piped out of the planters. Bergdorf had also set up an expanded NEST display on its home-goods floor, several stories up. (NEST has always seemed a little mass-market for Bergdorf, but I digress…)

I didn’t actually venture into Bergdorf that day, since I could tell that it was already too crowded for my taste, and I didn’t end up craving a new candle of any kind. Instead, I admired the window displays for a few minutes and moved on to my next errand.

I wonder how the various entities behind this initiative measured its success and whether they’ll repeat it next year. I can’t help thinking that the hordes of travelers looking for quintessentially New York “holiday magic” are more interested in “sights and sounds and…scent” that they can’t find anywhere else. 

However, I’m often wrong about these things. The more and more Manhattan begins to feel like it’s offering so many of the same diversions as the average upscale American suburb, a branded environmental scent with the same ingredients as a masstige candle (also available online!) might be the most appropriate finishing touch.