Christmas Gift Ideas: Scented Candles for (Almost) Everyone!

For the young at heart and millennials

Diptyque – Les Mondes de Diptyque – La Vallée du temps

Every year there are beautiful things from Diptyque. The Parisian perfume house is now considered the benchmark for scented candles with a touch of luxury, and there’s something special about that. The new line “Les Mondes de Diptyque” transforms the feeling of luxury into a tangible image. The line’s candles are made of minimalist oval glass, are as heavy as lead, and cost three times as much as a standard candle. A beautiful reusable glass.

La Vallée du Temps is a particularly good Christmas gift because it looks as minimalist as glass. The candle is designed to take you to China, the cradle of Chinese porcelain and, of course, white tea. Connoisseurs know: white tea also has a rather minimalistic taste and reveals its full aroma only after a certain time. This requires concentration and relaxation. The same goes for this candle: when you take it out of the box, it emits a scent reminiscent of open bottles of yerba mate. Only with time and a small concentration does a slightly smoky base and a slightly sweet component appear. When the candle burns, the aroma unobtrusively spreads throughout the room, like the aroma of a good cup of tea.

When you smell yerba mate, your first thought is, of course, to put a candle under the Christmas tree as a gift for your Berlin student relatives. But it doesn’t make it that easy. While the minimalist glass pairs well with a new MacBook, and the fact that the candle is refillable should at least address sustainability concerns to some extent, the surprising complexity of the scent makes La Vallée du Temps a good gift for anyone who already owns got out of the communal apartment.

For garden lovers

Loewe Home Fragrances – “Tomato Leaves”

There’s hardly a better time of year to reminisce about summer than the cold weeks before Christmas, when the skies are mostly cloudy and the snowy romance has yet to arrive. The Loewe tomato candle is the perfect occasion to remember summer, especially summer 2023. Then (it was just a few months ago) Vogue announced Tomato Girl for the summer and everyone on Tiktok was talking about it. candle: This candle from Loewe is scented with tomato leaves.

And quite rightly so. The vessel, made of bright red terracotta, is an eye-catcher in itself. And as warm and earthy to the touch as it is, it doesn’t compare to the smooth glass surfaces that scented candles usually try to impress with. And most importantly: the scent actually does what it promises. It lies in the room with a pleasant breath and resembles the spicy, fresh smell of the leaves of tomato bushes. Anyone who has a garden or grows tomatoes on the balcony knows that this aroma is very peculiar, on the one hand bitter, but promising. When you light a Loewe candle, soft berry notes of black currant appear, delightfully complementing the scent of tomato leaves.

The candle is definitely too good for the kitchen, although it would probably work best there. In any case, this is a gift for anyone who loves a beautiful garden, but is not averse to occasional luxury.

For some seriousness

Frédéric Malle – “Saint des Saints”

Packaged in a beautiful Yves Klein blue, the scent of this candle hits you just by sniffing the box. “Saint de Saints” is a composition by perfumer Carlos Benaim, presented in a typical Mallet vessel – a white cup with a rounded base, painted red on the inside. Thanks to its minimalist appearance, the candle really fits into any apartment: if the place is in Baroque style, it creates a beautiful visual counterpoint. And it fits just as elegantly into the rather clean surroundings.