Ormond Jayne - Etoile

Maria Wiesner

Editor in the Society department at FAZ.NET.

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Christmas is traditionally the time for perfumers to show what they can do. Candles and room scents full of cinnamon, mulled wine and gingerbread smells then fill the shelves. You can get fed up with that. Like Linda Jayne from Ormond Jayne. For her collection of scented candles for Christmas, she has set herself nothing less than conjuring up the spirit of the festive season without resorting to the cliché scents of cinnamon and oranges. With the “Etoile” candle, she succeeded in doing just that.

Once lit, it takes a while for the scent to fully unfold. At the beginning it still looks a bit soapy, as if the candle was best suited for the bathroom. But after a few minutes the spicier notes come into play in this creation: cardamom and laurel are reminiscent of Christmas cookies, amber and tonka bring a cozy warmth and a subtle tangerine note gives the candle the necessary freshness. The glass - white, printed with oriental lanterns - looks particularly good in the living room and speaks of a certain fascination for the Arab world, with its smells and fairy tales. “Etoile” is only a Christmas fragrance at second glance, so it is also very good for the cold season. A candle that is perfect as a present for Santa Claus - for mothers, partners or aunts with a weakness for the south.

Le Labo - Santal 26

What do Taylor Swift, Brad Pitt and Jennifer Lopez have in common?

If you can believe the gossip, then the apartments of all these stars smell of “Santal 26”.

This candle from the New York label Le Labo has now achieved cult status.

Lopez is said to use more than a hundred pieces a month and actress Blake Lively once stated that she prefers to give away the candle because of the customizable label.

Of course, that was not the only reason for including them on this list (but definitely one that speaks for itself from a purely visual point of view when conventional scented candles seem too impersonal).

Above all, we wanted to know what's next in the hype about scented candles.

First of all, one shouldn't rely on the name.

As with his perfumes, Le Labo also creates room fragrances around the idea of ​​a fragrance rather than clumsily reproducing it.

So “Santal 26” doesn't just smell of the eponymous sandalwood.

Once lit, a warm, almost leathery scent emerges from the candle in a thick-walled glass vessel, the wood notes of which sound soft.

This sandalwood is polished to a high gloss.

It is not for nothing that the creation also likes to smell hotel lobbies in luxury accommodations.

They can be given away very well to nieces and nephews who follow many celebrities on Instagram and to the jet setter couple who sorely missed hanging out in hotel lobbies this winter.

Cire Trudon - Mary

With her novels "The Last Man" and "Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus" Mary Shelley co-founded science fiction literature and, together with her husband, the poet Percy B. Shelley, and their mutual friend Lord Byron, she introduced English romanticism on the head. Today she is always a determined and self-confident woman. But Mary Shelley is also often associated with a certain Goth vibe, which may be due to the fact that her best-known novel "Frankenstein" is also traded as a representative of the Gothic Novel. The candle that perfumer Emilie Bouge created for the French fragrance label Cire Trudon and which is dedicated to the writer also brings something dark and morbid. It simply bears their name: "Mary".

The matt black glass with the golden Cire Trudon coat of arms alone is a statement.

The base notes - amber, moss, frankincense and patchouli embody an almost Victorian heaviness and gloom.

Cedar, cashmere and gujak wood notes as well as lacquer rock rose give the fragrance a pleasant cosiness and straw flower, tuberose, star anise and cardamom in the top note a certain playfulness.

All three levels result in a complex, spicy fragrance that goes well with the gray season without wanting to press you with its heaviness into the couch cushions.

If the smell hits you as a real cloud when you unpack it, it is pleasantly subtle as soon as the candle burns.