Business: Powder is perfume, Dillard's reassures

The Little Rock, Ark., department store chain issued the reassurance after realizing that a small percentage of its holiday magazines, now being mailed to about 1-million customers, may contain a talcumlike powder inside a scent strip for Estee Lauder perfume. The powder, which holds the encapsulated scent, is left behind sporadically during the printing of the fragrance samplers. In most cases, the powder adheres to the strip and comes off only when rubbed.

"We figure less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the catalogs will have this white powder without rubbing," Dillard's spokesman Skip Rutherford said. "But we just wanted to tell our customers that not all powder is bad."

The U.S. Postal Service, understandably nervous about powders since anthrax attacks began, has been notified of Dillard's Christmas mailing, Rutherford said, and it had no concerns about delivering the catalogs.

"Never in a million years could I have predicted we'd put out a release like this," Rutherford said. "But in 2001, you do things a little differently than you did in the past."

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