A Splash of the Pacific, Bottled for a New York Sink

At a bathroom basin in Manhattan, a bar of hand soap is doing something unexpected: conjuring the smell of a rainstorm off the California coast. The scent, called Big Sur After Rain, is meant to carry the marine air of that stretch of coastline into the everyday act of washing up. It is a small object making a large promise — that a sink in New York can, for a moment, smell like the edge of the Pacific after a storm.

With reporting from Elle Decor.