Here at Who What Wear, we know how to shop—be it for the latest fashion trends, secondhand wardrobe classics, beauty that performs, or the chicest of interiors. For us, shopping is so much more than a job. It’s how we live our lives. As such, we’re eager to analyse how our shopping habits have changed given the fact that 2020 has been a year like no other. Many of our industry contacts report that, unsurprisingly, loungewear was, and continues to be, highly sought after. Face masks are, of course, another in-demand item, as are office furniture and houseplants. But one of the best-selling products of the year is, undoubtedly, candles.
Take John Lewis & Partners. It reportedly sold 43% more candles between January and May this year than last, while Amara also saw a considerable upturn, with a 127% increase in candle sales in the same time frame. Now that we find ourselves in midwinter, we predict those numbers will rise steadily.
Still, we wanted to know which candles specifically are selling well. While we’d like to be in a position to try every scented candle ourselves, time nor our bank balances will allow it. So for our next purchase, we thought we’d rely on the numbers to determine which candles are really worth the investment.
To get a better idea of which are the most popular candles, we reached out to six of our favourite candle stockists—Net-a-Porter, Liberty, Harvey Nichols, Cult Beauty, Space NK, and John Lewis & Partners—to find out which wicks have secured their top sales spots. And while several big candle names made the cut—think, Jo Loves, Diptyque, Fornasetti, and Jo Malone London—there was one candle that three of the stockists revealed as one of their biggest sellers: Cire Trudon’s Ernesto Candle (£75).
Harvey Nichols, Liberty, and Cult Beauty hail Cire Trudon’s rum- and leather-scented Ernesto Candle as a best seller, which is understandable given the complexity of the fragrance and the fact that it comes in Cire Trudon’s iconic, Instagram-ready gold-crested votive.
As for the other most popular candles at all the aforementioned retailers, we’ve listed them for you below—with plenty of time to add them to your Christmas list. Keep scrolling to discover the most popular candles of the year.
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