While certain candles may evoke the feeling of sipping black coffee and snacking on figs in the French countryside, a Boy Smells candle will make you feel like you're dancing in a luxury after-hours Parisian club. It might sound like an overstatement to call a candle edgy, but this is the brand that created the Instagam-famous Kush candle (a blend of cannabis, suede, and musk). So yes, the Boy Smells holiday candle collection is definitely edgy, without skimping on the cozy log cabin vibes necessary for a winter candle release.
It's a holiday candle collection for people who don't like most holiday candles. There's no pumpkin spice or sickly sweet faux gingerbread to be found. Instead, the three scents — Cedar Stack, Cinderose, and Redhead — are connected by a thread of cedar. Each candle expands upon the woodsy smell uniquely, combining seemingly opposite smells like cedar and sawdust or rose and smoke, to create seamless, new scents.
The creators of Boy Smells are used to thinking outside of binaries. “We wanted to have products that were embracing masculine and feminine simultaneously in a simple and straightforward way that wasn’t overtly targeted to one gender,” the Boy Smells founders Matthew Herman and David Kien said in a press release. “It’s a permission to harness your power from wherever you want it.”
Though Cedar Stack and Cinderose are already customer favorites, the holiday collection is the only time you can get the Boy Smells candles in the matte red packaging. It's a game-changer for fans who have come to love the brand's iconic millennial pink and black glass packaging. Since half the fun of owning a luxury candle is taking a photo of it burning for Instagram, and then later gathering your makeup brushes in the empty tumbler for the perfect #shelfie, getting the limited edition red colorway will be a status symbol in due time.
But that's just half the fun. The other half is the fact that they smell really good. The allure of a coveted upscale candle like Boy Smells is that you won't be able to run to the mall and buy a room spray that smells just like it: Once you burn the candle out, the scent is gone. If you've never treated yourself to one, these $32 holiday candles might be your gateway into the world of bougie parfumée. Redhead, the newest of the bunch, is anchored in cedar with notes of frankincense and spice. Cinderose is the rarest combination, part floral rose bouquet, part smoke and cedar.
Though both worthy of a spot on your holiday wishlist, the Cedar Stack candle is the collection's coziest scent, and the one you need this winter. The candle combines cedar with tobacco, peppercorn, and bay leaf, lightly layering in juniper berry and sawdust, for the ultimate log-cabin-in-the-woods smell you didn't know you needed in your life.
After a busy year of press coverage and social media love, it's easy to forget that buying a Boy Smells candle is still shopping small. Boy Smells candles have been created in the founders' Los Angeles home since 2015 — and once the limited edition holiday collection is gone, it's gone. So keep scrolling to shop all three matte red candles from the release before they sell out, then visit the Boy Smells website to explore the other edgy, offbeat scents.
