You Should Be Having a Big Earthy Summer

A few months ago, at a small impromptu dinner party at my place, my guests all commented on one thing. Unfortunately, it’s not the food, or the whiskey made of rubber from the Tokyo airport. It’s not the playlist I made or the new painting I hung on the wall that day. No, the star of the show is… a candle. Something that smells like tomatoes. Everyone commented on the candle, and within a week every guest that night informed me that they had bought one of their candles.

I’m discounting it a bit. It’s not just a candle. I’m a guy who calls himself a candle; I do my research and spend too much of the little disposable income I have on things that I can burn. This is the Roma Heirloom Tomato Candle from the Flamingo Estate: you light it and for a few seconds you think you are in southern Italy, with the woman working in the kitchen for dinner. But Flamingo Estate, a purveyor of luxury goods and other hippo products, is very LA. Everything they sell, from a box stuffed with organic mushrooms to body wash and wildflower honey, is amazing. earthy. Not quite crunchy, and light on the hippie woo-woo feel. It’s not exactly retro, but it sounds familiar to those of us who grew up in an era when Whole Foods was an odd choice for grocery shopping. My Tomato Candle is a prime example of what I call Big Earth Summer, showing that we celebrate the rich, organic, slightly raw pleasures of all things botanical, flowery and hot.

To put it plainly, Big Earthy Summer is often rooted in scent. These days, people don’t want to smell like an old leather couch. Instead, they turned to perfumes like Louis Vuitton’s “Imagination” (citron, bergamot), DS & Durga’s “Rose Atlantic” (you smell a little lemon and then you smell a little seawater) and “Fico di Amalfi” from Acqua di Parma. Big Earthy Summer is about trying to get the great feeling back in the little things — back in the land without having to leave the city.

This has been a while in the making. I remember the little jokes a few years ago because I didn’t understand why teenagers were talking about Cottagecore or Gardencore or whatever they called it. But then I started stocking up on Tevas and Birkenstocks, turning my living room into a mini-forest, taking my Nalgene with me during the day, and really raving about wines that are described as “funky” into night. And then the spring of 2020 came, we had to cover our faces everywhere we went, and that robs us of the opportunity to satisfy one of our senses. Now we are looking for ways to get back in touch with nature in any way possible. It’s the things we eat, the candles and perfumes we use, but also the things we wear. My favorite celebrity summer suit is the whole Chris Pine wearing a weird hat that makes him look like he’s going to help Ina Garten tend to her vegetable garden, which lined up nicely with grief. aesthetic obsession “Costal Grandma”. He may be on something: flowers too, everywhere. On tops, pants, hats, whatever. It’s all flowers, flowers, flowers, just like every journey outside is a walk in the garden.

Especially as the climate crisis becomes more and more visible in our lives, embracing the land doesn’t feel like a trend or out of fashion but rather just embracing things we might already consider as a trend. of course. Like the tomato, the inspiration behind the Flamingo Estate candle. People have always loved tomatoes (save it to Tom Brady), but I’m going to talk about them the way we talk about them now — about what tomato season is like for us, about our journey to finding something new. the ugliest heirlooms at the farmers market or the way other places are using them — is a healthy obsession.