After making a memory at Renaissance Hotels, guests can carry the ambient scent back with them into daily life with a special fragrance collection.
It’s a little-known fact that our sense of smell is more closely linked to memory than any of our other four senses — a biological quirk having to do with the wiring of the human brain and how it processes sensory information. The intricate relationship between scent and memory means a fragrance can embed itself in our mind’s eye and stay there for the rest of our lives, forever connected to the details surrounding the moment we encountered it. So, when we have a pleasant experience in the midst of an equally pleasing fragrance, inhaling that same scent months or years later can swing open the door of the imagination, welcoming the feeling of that moment into the here and now.
This phenomenon is a fascinating study in the way our senses affect our mood, and for those who wish to be surrounded with positive sensory cues, scents that remind us of a particularly happy place or time can be a powerful tool in the quest for well-being. That’s why Renaissance Hotels offers its Shiso Tea Fragrance Collection for purchase — so that guests who have made lovely memories during their stay can take that scent with them to enjoy it whenever and wherever they please.
If you’ve ever taken a deep breath inside a Renaissance Hotels lobby, elevator landing, fitness center, or other common area, you’ve been met with notes of shiso tea leaf, citrus, white mint, tuberose, gardenia, and lily. These are the aromatic components of the brand’s signature series, available in a candle, reed diffuser, scent machine, and replacement cartridges to reinvigorate the machine as its fragrance fades over time.
Shiso leaf — the star of this collection — is an intoxicating scent note (the primary scent component in any perfume, cologne or home fragrance) known for its subtle, verdant crispness, like stepping into a field of mint covered in fresh dew. The Asian botanical is actually a culinary herb, popular both as a garnish in East Asian cuisine and as a critical ingredient in many traditional Southeast Asian dishes. Indigenous to an array of mountainous regions in India and China, it’s a member of the mint family, which explains that familiar coolness we recognize when we breathe it in.
In the Shiso Tea Fragrance Collection, that green-hued coolness is balanced with the creamy warmth of white florals and the tang of citrus fruit. Altogether, the top, middle and base notes blend together to create a luminous scent that’s somehow calming and enlivening at the same time.
The Shiso Tea Candle, crafted in Brooklyn by the home fragrance experts at Joya, stands 3.75” and lends a touch of sophistication with its natural black wax made with soy, hand-poured into a black ceramic vessel and offering up to 75 hours of burn time. The Shiso Tea Reed Diffuser, also by Joya, houses 12 sleek black reeds in a modern black vase — an eye-catching way to gently dispense fragrance throughout a room. For full control over the strength of the scent, the Shiso Tea Room Diffuser is a veritable scent machine, lightly covering up to 800 square feet for as many as 300 hours when in use. Perfect for those who are sensitive to strong fragrances, it offers the ability to dial the scent’s intensity up or down as desired, and replacement cartridges may be ordered as needed to keep its aroma alive.
In the mood to make some memories? Capture this evocative fragrance from Renaissance Hotels and enjoy its unforgettable scent in the comfort of home.