Irma Boom designed a book for the perfume Chanel No. 5. Image: Jonathan Leijonhufvud The airy white-paged book is totally ink free. Image: Jonathan Leijonhufvud One of Boom's favorite pages. Image: Courtesy of Irma Boom Each page is embossed. Image: Jonathan Leijonhufvud The book tells the story of Gabrielle Chanel and the making of Chanel No. 5. Image: Galerie VIVID Boom designed each page with line drawings or small graphic-style dots. Image: Galerie VIVID The book is 300 pages and 5 cm thick, a nod to the perfume's name. Image: Galerie VIVID The pages were first designed on aluminum plates. Image: Galerie VIVID Then embossed on an ink-less letterpress. Image: Galerie VIVID They had to figure out how to bind the book without pressing it since that would ruin the embossing. Image: Galerie VIVID The book is bound but not cut, which makes its edges uneven. Image: Galerie VIVID Though Boom has infused her pages with smell in the past, she refused to do it for the Chanel book— "It would have been literal," she says. Image: Galerie VIVID A catalog containing all of Boom's work. Image: Irma Boom It's barely 2 inches tall. Image: Irma Boom This is a nod to her process. Boom often makes miniatures of her books before she makes the full size version. Image: Irma Boom Boom's James Jennifer Georgina is a 1200-page book written entirely in postcards. Image: Irma Boom Sky Diary. Image: Irma Boom Boom designed Project Japan: Metabolism Talks, a book by Rem Koolhaas. Image: Irma Boom

It’s not an exaggeration to say that Irma Boom has designed some of the coolest books ever put on a bookshelf. Throughout her career, the Amsterdam-based designer has made more than 250 volumes, and a staggering 20 percent have found a home in a permanent collection at MoMA. They really are works of art, though Boom herself is vehemently against calling them so. “I do not consider and approach my work as art. I do push the boundaries of bookmaking, but it is never art,” she says. “Books are not unique—it is commissioned work, it is a reproduction.”

Ok, so maybe art isn’t quite the right word, but what Boom creates is often more than just a book as we typically know it. A book by Boom is an experience, an object to be appreciated in its own right, even when its technically just a vehicle for another artist. Most recently, she completed a book commissioned by Chanel, the Parisian fashion house, for its Chanel No. 5 perfume. And in classic Boom style, it’s not what you’d expect. The 300-page book has no ink—each of the crisp white pages is embossed with a drawing or quotation that helps the story of Gabrielle Chanel unfold. It’s clean, understated and ephemeral, and somehow still totally engrossing.

>Boom spent time in Chanel’s Paris apartment and studied her life.

When Boom begins working on a book, she totally immerses herself in the subject. She says Chanel gave her carte blanche to do whatever she wanted with the it, with no artistic pressure or push in any direction. The fashion brand simply provided her with as much information as possible and let it percolate until the idea struck her. In this case, Boom spent time in Chanel’s Paris apartment and studied her life. She witnessed the bottling process and even joined the Chanel team as they picked roses in Grasse, a village in the Provence region of France. “When I was there I immediately got the idea for the book,” Boom recalls. “What I smelled there was so intense, exciting... not visible.”

Boom has long used embossing on the cover of her books, but to use it as the only source of printing was a unique challenge. Typically books are bound and cut, but the pressing process would rend the embossing flat, so they had to figure out a different way to ensure the subtly of Boom’s designs kept their form. They ended up using an old letterpress machine, with the ink removed. Each page was first designed on an aluminum plate and turned into a mold that the pages would then press against.

The attention to detail in the Chanel book would be astonishing, if it weren’t Boom making it. The book is 5 cm thick, a nod to the perfume’s name, and each design was hand drawn. And despite the temptation to infuse the pages with the smell itself, Boom says the idea was too literal, too obvious. “The concentration is on the images, text and tactility.” she says. “If you leaf through the book, you can almost smell the perfume—and I think that’s, in this case, much more interesting and thought-provoking.”

Boom is currently exhibiting Architecture of the Book at Institut Néerlandais in Paris until Dec. 15.