If you’re looking for a fragrance with a story (a real story, not one concocted by a marketing team), your search may be over. In 1960, perfumer Raoul Pantaleoni created a perfume for a Smell-O-Vision movie called Scent of Mystery , which was emitted into the cinema to indicate the presence of an elusive character played by Elizabeth Taylor. The film was a flop — as was the ahead-of-its-time concept of a scented movie — and the fragrance was lost to history. Until now.

Marissa Zappas, an indie perfumer with a cult following and a reputation for concocting cerebral pop-culture-inspired scents, has re-created the fragrance for “Her Scent of Mystery,” an exhibition at Manhattan gallery Olfactory Art Keller. The show, which was co-curated by MIT assistant professor Jas Brooks and Tammy Bu

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