Why a scent instantly takes you back to a stay
By Jeremy Fain, founder of Restelys. Updated 17 October 2026. 2 sources cited.
A smell can bring back a memory more vividly than a photograph. That is the very idea behind our three scents.
Psychologist Rachel Herz compared memories evoked by smells with those evoked by images or words. Memories triggered by a smell proved more emotional and took participants back more strongly to the moment they had lived.
This is sometimes called the Proust effect: smell is wired very directly to the brain regions that process emotion and memory.
So we named our scents after moments of the stay: Le Matin, Le Jardin and Le Salon. Finding the scent of your room at home is finding a little of the journey.
Sources
- Herz R.S. “Are odors the best cues to memory? A cross-modal comparison of associative memory stimuli”. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1998.
- Herz R.S., Schooler J.W. “A naturalistic study of autobiographical memories evoked by olfactory and visual cues: testing the Proustian hypothesis”. American Journal of Psychology, 2002.
The studies cited concern the ingredient or the skin, not our finished products.
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