The Anthropologie candle racket

I didn’t even bother with a Top Candles of 2022 post because I knew my number one candle was no longer for sale. It was an Anthropologie seasonal candle called Sequoia Cypress that was already sold out on their website the day I bought it in-store in late September. I loved it so much that I went back and bought another, and then spent all winter wishing I’d bought more before it disappeared from my life forever. OR SO I THOUGHT, because they have a candle in stock now that smells just like it. It’s called Lavender & Balsam and: sure. I don’t really get a lot of lavender? I think Anthropologie has a shelf somewhere of 12 jars labeled “Candle Scents” and they’re just recycling them in different pretty, overpriced vessels throughout the year but you know what, as long as they keep trotting out this one, I’m fine with that. This smells so good – it’s fresh and woody and it finishes with this little zzzzzing that I’m obsessed with, like if a scent could roll its Rs. I would definitely have sex with this candle. (Should I add a CILF tag to my posts? So far it’s this guy and the Tuesday Bassen Steakhouse candle.)

When it was Sequoia Cypress they described it as “Verdant cypress intermingles with rich mountain cedar, forest fern and regal redwood over a base of alpine juniper, wild bergamot, and sun-dappled sequoia.” Now that it’s Lavender Balsam, they’re all “Aromatic green lavender layered with fresh balsam, citrus accents, and warm woods.” Fine, ok. You got a deadline and a word count and we all have to get paid: I get that. The oars are clacking, the buffalo are colluding*, everything is happening! They smell near-identical. (Lavender & Balsam is maybe a fraction sweeter? It’s negligible, like the salt in your Aquafina.) Luckily, they both smell AMAZING. They smell cozy, a sort of juicy dark forest scent with a lowkey buzz. It’s fresh, it’s fruity, it’s woody, it’s David the Gnome and his wife go to a midnight end-of-summer rave and take gnome molly and fuck under a fern. They both remind me a lot of Phlur’s Apricot Privée, a perfume that I, a person who doesn’t like most perfumes, bought a few months ago and am very into. New year new me! Try to keep up! Haha jk I’ve spent most of this year wrestling with my mental health but I’m also wearing per-fuuuuume! Please read that sentence in Oprah’s giveaway voice because that’s how I wrote it.

Anyway, I highly recommend this candle. I will not let this one slip away so easily this time, because who knows when it will disappear and what name it will go by its next time around? The world could end at any time and Anthropologie is probably workshopping its next incarnation as we speak, so I plan to go back and buy backups in both jar and bowl form. (How do we feel about bowl candles? They feel a bit scammy to me, like I’m getting screwed out of my last bites.)

* This is a personal shorthand I should explain: I love scents, but I also love bonkers perfume copy. One of the all-time greats was Byredo announcing their Palermo** perfume back in 2010 with this chunk of text: “With clacking oars the Phoenicians arrived millennia ago to found their center of ancient exchange. Under golden Roman yoke the port gained gleaming palaces and mosaics. Ostrogoths, Vandals, and Byzantines alternately wrecked and rebuilt. Moorish and Berber emirs dug irrigation and harvested new fruits – the Bergamot oranges they planted still grow. Norman kings wrested the island back from the East. Garibaldi’s thousand redshirts galloped through, and Italy was born. All those centuries of interleaved layers, one bled into the other, remain palpable in the air, the water, the art, the architecture, the spirit.” Oooh yeah baby, tell me about those clacking oars! Don’t bury that lede! I definitely want to spray all these layers of ancient commerce on my neck post-shower! Another favorite is the description for Figues et Garçons Nez a Nez cologne that included the line “Collusion with the buffalo presents a tenable stature to this verdant and fiery explosion.” This is extremely dumb and I completely love it. This is the level of ridiculous I need to clown on in order to survive. Give me this drugged-up thesaurus-ass job! I guarantee whoever has it right now is like a daughter of a Rolling Stone and doesn’t need it.

** I genuinely love Byredo’s Palermo and associate its scent with the first year I was married. Lo how those oars did clack!