Something smells good over at Gourmet Girls. The alluring aroma might be wafting from the shop’s new line of bespoke candles with seven multi-layered scents.
Known for its elevated treats and colorful retail items, the Lobdell Avenue kitchen and home shop recently debuted its line of seven bespoke candles. Gourmet Girls owner Katia Mangham says the bespoke candle line has been in the works for about six months. The scented candles are available in-store and online now. They come in two sizes.
“I have been looking for a clean candle line,” Mangham says. “Which is really hard to find with really good scents that aren’t too (patchouli-forward) and sort of more earthy and grungy. Trying to find something that was as elevated as the rest of the things in here was the goal. And I think we’ve achieved that.”
|
|
|
When deciding on the scents, Mangham says she tried to create a line that had something for everyone. All seven candles use about three to five different notes to achieve the final fragrance. The scents are versatile enough to appeal to all customers or to fill any room in a home, she says.
The candles are named using numbers. The scents range from floral and slightly musky—like No. 7 with damask rose, vetiver, amber and musk—to fruity and herby—like No. 8 with black fig, lavender, lemon and thyme. The holiday-themed scent with notes of citron, fir and white cedar was aptly named No. 12. To keep things fresh, more scents may be added in the future, while some may leave the lineup depending on popularity.
As for Mangham’s favorite, she says it depends on the day, but she’s fond of both No. 1 and No. 2.
“I feel like you could easily walk away with two or three of these and have completely different profiles of scents that you can put in different areas of your house and light at different times,” she says. “It’s hard to pick just one child.”
Mangham decided to keep the candles’ packaging and labels simple. Each comes in a crisp white box with the Gourmet Girls logo embossed on the front and the fragrance name below. The glass canisters have a Gourmet Girls wax seal instead of a large label.
“The packaging was also really important because it’s the first thing you see,” she says. “If it’s not beautifully packaged, then you may not even pick it up. And so, obviously, the scent has to stand up to the package. It all has to be cohesive and go together.”
The candles are poured in Louisiana and contain clean ingredients for safe burning. All Gourmet Girls candles are made with a proprietary blend of coconut and apricot wax with a braided cotton wick. The fragrances are carcinogen-free, mutagen-free, phthalate-free, cruelty-free and vegan.
“I’m pretty clean in everything we cook,” Mangham says. “We use organic chicken. We use only Gulf shrimp without chemicals. Most of what we use, ingredient-wise, is organic whenever possible and, if not, local. And so if I’m going to develop something that is going to have my brand on it, I wanted to carry on forward with that just because I think it really makes a difference.”
|
|
|
The candles come in two sizes: 10 ounces with a burn time of 60-plus hours and 65 ounces with a burn time of 180-plus hours. The shop also sells glass domes to encase the candles when not in use and bottles of long matchsticks to light up the wicks.
And customers have already taken notice of the new line since it dropped last week. Last Thursday, Mangham hosted a Sip and Sniff event, where customers could smell the candles while enjoying cocktails. We even paused our Friday interview a few times so Mangham could answer questions patrons had about the new display as they checked out.
The Gourmet Girls Bespoke Candles are available for purchase in-store and online starting at $78. Gourmet Girls is at 1660 Lobdell Ave. and is open Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m., and Saturday, 9 a.m.-2 p.m.