Opinion | Meghan Markle loves scented candles and so do I: how they’re getting me through pandemic and election anxieties
- Autumn oak, charred juniper, pumpkin spice, fig and cedar: scented candles are helping Mary McNamara create a version of herself living in a calmer, saner time
- Smell is one of the strongest triggers of memory and emotion, and triggering the best of these has become paramount for her in 2020
Mary McNamara is a culture columnist and critic for the Los Angeles Times
Here’s how bad it’s got: I just ordered a scented-candle-making kit. I know, I know; I am way behind the curve.
DIY pride is not a factor. I actually know how to make candles, and churn butter, and I sew (if graded on a generous curve) a fine seam.
Nor am I attempting to distract my family with yet another pandemic project. My new hobby is simply a matter of economics: I will be trying to make my own scented candles because I need to stop spending so much damn money on scented candles and I refuse to accomplish this by burning fewer of them.
Before the pandemic, I had an uneasy relationship with the turn-of-the-century boom in the home fragrance industry.
Certainly it is lovely to walk into a fig- or balsam- or hyacinth-scented room (apologies to those who are allergic or bothered by scent). But all those candles and diffusers cost money, often quite a bit, and their growing popularity seemed to be a tell of the new faux-cosy consumerism, a mark of a system that encouraged the notion that money was there to burn. In Los Angeles anyway, the fault lines of gentrification always seemed to lead to a coffee bar and a shop selling US$40 candles, often with names like Cashmere.
