FIENA X Aromaria: An Evening Where Scent Meets Ambition
- Oct 13
- 7 min read
Last week in Regent Street, two brands came together to create something more than an event, a sensory experience. FIENA, the London-based private network for ambitious women, joined forces with Aromaria, an exquisite Mexican fragrance house known for its craftsmanship and heritage, in a members-only collaboration that celebrated scent, creativity, and connection. Withers & Sloane Founder, Erica Fraser writes.
FIENA: Adventure, Community, and Five Pillars of Possibility
FIENA is more than a membership club. It is a lifestyle collective, a private network of women with ambition, curiosity, and a desire for meaningful experiences.
Since its founding, FIENA has built its identity around five signature pillars of experience: Heart & Soul (wellbeing, restoration), Showstopper (fashion, beauty, art, city-lifestyle), Magic (travel, retreats, escapism), Samurai (sports, fitness, adventure), and Gentlewoman (business, intellectual growth).
The pillars take on physical experiential forms through a range of experiences, from horse-riding, paddle-boarding, sailing, and canoeing under the Samurai division to luxurious dinners, life-drawing, or spa getaways in Showstopper or Heart & Soul. There is both the adrenaline-fuelled and the contemplative, the high-glamour and the deeply personal.
What stands out most about FIENA's founder (and leadership) is the vision: they identified a gap where London’s fast pace and transient social life often left high-achieving women disconnected from novelty, from other like-minded women, and from themselves. FIENA was born from a desire to rebel against the ordinary and make possible new connections, adventures, and inspirations, not just through speaker panels or brunch-style socialising, but through curated, beautifully designed and high-quality events.
Source: Aromaria, Regent Street
The Founders
Jae Ruax, Founder of FIENA
FIENA was founded by Jae Ruax, a creative entrepreneur with a background in brand strategy and experiential design. With years of experience leading campaigns for global brands such as Universal Pictures and Philips, Jae recognised that ambitious women needed more than a networking space, they needed a place to truly belong.
Jae's exceptional vision for FIENA is grounded in the belief that success should feel expansive, connected, and joyful. Under her leadership, FIENA has evolved into a private collective where women can challenge themselves, explore new passions, and build genuine friendships through shared experience. Each event, from fragrance workshops to paddleboarding on the Thames, reflects her commitment to creating spaces that nurture both professional growth and personal discovery.
Ana Patricia Nikaido Licona, Founder of Aromaria
Aromaria was born from the imagination and craftsmanship of Ana Patricia Nikaido Licona, who set out to redefine the art of scent through cultural fusion and emotional storytelling.
Drawing on her Mexican heritage and the perfumery traditions of Grasse, France, Ana Patricia built Aromaria as a house of artistry, one that honours memory, place, and feeling in equal measure.
Today, her sons Jorge and Rodrigo, both featured in Forbes 30 Under 30 LATAM, continue to evolve her legacy, ensuring that every fragrance embodies the same precision, authenticity, and narrative depth that she first envisioned. Through its elegant Regent Street flagship, Aromaria invites guests to engage not just with scent, but with the emotions and memories it evokes, a living expression of Ana Patricia’s founding philosophy that perfume should be as personal as it is beautiful.
Aromaria: Heritage, Craftsmanship and the Art of Fragrance
Aromaria brings to this collaboration all the sensorial depth of fragrance. With roots in Mexico, Aromaria draws from rich heritage, exclusive craftsmanship, and a commitment to excellence. It sources high quality ingredients, from the Grasse region in France, renowned for its iconic history and geographical prowess, adored by perfumers the world over. For those unfamiliar with its history, Grasse is known as the "perfume capital" due to its historical connection to the fragrance industry. Beginning in the 16th century with the cultivation of flowers like jasmine, rose, and lavender, Grasse is home to famous perfume houses such as Fragonard, Galimard, and Molinard.
During the evening, one of the standout creations had top notes of soft violets and neroli, heart notes of bergamot, and a base of sandalwood, a composition that balanced freshness and floral lift with depth and warmth. This blend offered a sensory parallel to what FIENA offers socially: the energetic brightness of first connection (top notes), the engaging heart of creative collaboration, and the lasting base of community and memory.
The Evening: Craft, Scent, Space
From arrival to scent creation, the event was exquisite in every detail. Aromaria’s Regent Street space was beautifully curated, design, lighting, furnishings, scent in the air, the feeling of stepping into a refined sanctuary. The setup felt intentional: not simply luxurious, but also inviting for exploration and creativity.
As guests arrived, they were greeted with refreshments. The mingling atmosphere, soft conversations, visual cues of elegance and comfort, all set the tone for something special. By 7:30pm, an introduction to Aromaria’s story aligned well with FIENA's mission: here were two brands both rooted in authenticity, artistry, and sensorial richness. The connection was obvious, both pursue quality, emotion, elevated experiences.
Then came the immersive scent creation workshop. Under Aromaria’s specialists, guests selected their preferred FIENA pillar as inspiration, then blended accords and notes to craft a bespoke fragrance. The experience allowed each person to experiment: adding a drop of violet, balancing it with sandalwood base, infusing brightness via neroli or bergamot. It was hands-on artistry.
The result?
The creation of signature “FIENA scents”, each personal, yet anchored in the shared elegance of both brands all centred around the iconic FIENA pillars. These scents were are narratives: what pillar do you identify with? What memory or feeling you want to evoke? What you want to carry forward? What is your defining identity?
Why the Collaboration Resonates
What made this partnership work so well is alignment. FIENA, with its pillars, with its balancing of adventure and reflection, of sport and luxury, of growth and rest; Aromaria, with its pairing of Mexican heritage, elite craftsmanship, natural ingredients derived from Grasse, and artistic perfumery. Each complements the other: FIENA gives structure and pillars of identity; Aromaria gives scent artistry and depth.
For any event to feel meaningful, you need more than surface glamour. You need narrative: why this? why now? why this brand? And here, the story is: ambitious women, already living busy lives, invited to pause into aesthetics, into memory, into creativity; to do more than be seen, to create something of their own scent, their own signature.
L-R: Withers & Sloane's, Erica Fraser; Bibi, FIENA; FIENA members and Sarah, Aromaria
What Scent Means in Brand Storytelling & Creative Strategy
Scent is among the most primal of senses. It reaches parts of our brain tied to memory and emotion almost immediately. In branding and creative strategy, scent allows an experiential dimension: it is not just what you see or what you hear, but what you breathe, what lingers.
For brands, integrating scent can:
deepen emotional connection: a smell can evoke nostalgia, aspiration, comfort, or excitement in ways visuals alone often cannot
build lasting impression: people tend to remember smells long after they’ve forgotten images or words
differentiate: in sectors where aesthetics, quality and sensory richness matter, scent becomes a mark of distinctiveness
align identity: just as with visual brand identity, scent can mirror personality (fresh and vibrant, deep and woody, airy and floral etc.), and thus reinforce brand values
In the case of FIENA × Aromaria, scent becomes a medium through which FIENA's pillars are expressed physically. Each pillar could be mapped to scent dimensions (vivid versus calm, adventurous versus refined, floral vs woody). The workshop encouraged thinking through what makes a brand identity, and what makes an individual identity, and how scent can signal that to others and to oneself.
Founder Praise & Leadership
The success of this evening (and more broadly of Fiena) springs from leadership with vision. FIENA's founder(s) understood a need among high-achieving women in London: a sense of lack, of spaces that both challenge and celebrate, that offer adrenaline and elegance, sport and solace, business and fun. Their ability to build a multifaceted collective, with five pillars that truly offer diverse experiences (from intense physical adventure to quiet restoration) is admirable. It’s rare to see a membership programme that does not lean only one way (e.g. only networking or only wellness) but holds complexity.
Similarly, Aromaria's founder(s) and perfumers are to be praised for their unwavering commitment to quality, sourcing ingredients internationally, respecting natural materials, working with perfumer standards of the highest grading. The artistry in blending soft violets and neroli, balancing with bergamot heart and sandalwood base demonstrates both technical skill and creative sensibility.
Reflections & Takeaways
Memory is co-created. Events like this envelope the audience into a dynamic narrative. Activities that involve action, and that encourage collaborations. When members craft their own scent, they bring their subjectivity, their preferences, their story. That builds deeper connection, aligned with the pillars of FIENA.
Experiential luxury still matters. In an age when many brands talk about experience, doing it well, sensory, beautiful, creative, distinguishes.
Community + Craft = Value. People value being part of something high quality, where craft matters, and where others are similarly discerning. The mix of sport, culture, business, rest, art, provided by FIENA, shows that a community can be varied yet coherent.
Future Possibilities
Looking ahead, collaborations like FIENA × Aromaria can point the way for several trends:
More luxury & lifestyle brands investing in scent experiences as part of membership or community strategy.
Increasing demand from consumers (especially women with busy lives) for “made by me” luxury touches: workshops, bespoke creations.
The integration of heritage, craft, and sustainability: high-quality sourcing, keeping ingredient integrity, respecting perfumer grading, etc.
For FIENA, tthey are spearheading collaborative practice. Already scheduled are more sensory collaborations to come: from design, to taste (food & drink), physical movement to sound-led experiences, all aligned to the pillars.
The FIENA × Aromaria evening was a convergence of purpose and artistry. It showed what happens when a network for ambitious women emphasises not only external success, but also internal richness: emotion, aesthetics, creativity. And, when a heritage fragrance house respects its materials, its craft, and its audience enough to guide and collaborate, it creates a narrative and a culture all in its own right.
In that Regent Street room, with violet, neroli, bergamot, sandalwood, and with laughter, inspiration, and connection, something lasting was created. The scents lingered beyond their bottles; the memory lingers beyond the event.
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