rlem Renaissance.  How the Harlem Candle Company came to be Prior to launching her own brand in 2014, Johnson was going by the social media handle of Travelista Teri, working on travel content for her own YouTube channel and for various media outlets including the Travel Channel and The Huffington Post.  Johnson believes that this background in social media greatly aided her ability to weave a rich tapestry of stories with her fragrance products.  “The entire brand is inspired by icons and iconic places during the Harlem Renaissance, which took place during the 1920s and 1930s,” Johnson told Inside Retail. “The Harlem Renaissance was a sort of cultural explosion of artists, writers, people very involved in politics, entertainers, entrepreneurs, creatives, painters, and photographers. These people came to Harlem because it became a place where other like-minded people, people who were for progress, desegregation, and civil rights. Imagine just being in a place where everyone is kind of on the same page about what needs to change. “I am totally fascinated with what they’ve done, and even just their work, which is still so relevant today. Which I think is why I’m so excited about celebrating them through a fragrance.” Josephine has named some of her products after well-known figures from this time period, including musician Billie Holiday, writer Langston Hughes, and performer (and World War II-era spy) Josephine Baker.  The idea came about when Johnson was looking for affordable but meaningful gifts. A longtime lover of fragrances, she collected scented oils from a friend, who was also a fragrance chemist, and set about making 50 candles as gifts for her friends and family. The hand-made tokens were so well-received that Johnson’s sister encouraged her to start her own business and she began selling her fares at pop-up markets.  Before the brand was officially dubbed the Harlem Candle Company, her friends and family originally referred to it as Terry’s House of Candles in French.  However, Johnson knew she could come up with something better, and took inspiration from the neighborhood where she lived. Johnson moved to New York from her native city of Houston, Texas, and ended up in Harlem, after her friends warned her that Brooklyn was too expensive.  She stated, “I couldn’t be more grateful that Brooklyn was too expensive. Because I would not be talking to you today with this brand.” Collaborations and growth While the brand is dubbed the Harlem Candle Company, candles are not the only fragrance product on the menu. Johnson launched an extension of her business, the Harlem Perfume Company in October 2022. Since the brand’s initial launch with four candle fragrances, the product line now entails 27 candle offerings in various sizes and a range of other fragrance products including perfumes, soaps, lotions, diffusers, and room sprays. Currently, consumers can purchase products from Harlem Candle Company via the brand’s website, as well as online via Nordstrom, Bloomingdales, Macy’s, C.O. Bigelow, Saks.com, Amazon.com, and The Metropolitan Museum’s online gift shop. In 2021, in celebration of the exhibition, Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room, Harlem Candle Company partnered with The Met to present a candle inspired by Seneca Village. Located just a few hundred yards from the museum’s current location, Seneca Village was a settlement of free, Black tenants before it was destroyed by the City of New York to make way for Central Park. Notes like wild thyme and cedar leaf, signature scents of Central Park, along with additional aromas of red clove vetiver, and concrete fuse the scents of the present and future together. Johnson stated that the brand has experienced an average growth of 100 per cent every year since 2016.