Diptyque sells very expensive candles.
They look sleek, modern, and very stylish, and apparently smell heavenly.
The price of them is about $65 USD per candle, and I have been curious (of course I have been) to smell them, but can’t really bring myself to pay $65 USD for a candle.
It is literally like burning money. I would smell burning money, that’s what I’d smell.
I posed the question on Instagram in one of my stories, and two responses intrigued me (yes, you can message me DIRECTLY on Instagram!) and here it is:
Overpriced for sure
“I had a business making hand poured candles in high school and I can tell you that’s insanely overpriced.
It’s ridiculous. They don’t even use dye in their candles. It’s a basic glass jar, wax, and oil (scent). I’ve never seen the oil cost more than $25 for a 16 oz. bottle and you only add about an ounce of oil for every pound of wax.
Basic chemistry limits the amount of fragrance that can be added because there comes a point when it will no longer bind with the wax.”
Maybe the oil is expensive?
“Highly unlikely though I’m sure it is good quality. I’m sure you could order similar oils and make your own for a fraction of the cost.
I used to work for the company that made the perfumes for those candles. They made everything from high end fragrance to the scent for toilet cleaner. The fragrance in those candles costs <£3 (or $4 USD).”
“I can tell you that a lot of manufacturers are guilty of only scenting the top layer of wax. So it smells good the first time you burn it.”
I got curious, so I read an article (also sent to me by lovely reader E.M. from IG whom I would name but am not sure she would want me to) about why posh candles are money up in smoke and apparently Diptyque was “worth the hype” in their opinion, so perhaps they don’t scent just the top layer of wax but the entire candle itself.
Then I thought about it some more, and realized it is like anything else in the world.
Take Starbucks for instance.
Hot milk, some coffee (what, you can’t make that at home yourself?) and some syrup. $6.
Real cost at home, is $1.50 at best, per cup.
A whole litre of organic milk (not even what they use at Starbucks) is $4! That makes at least 4 MASSIVE cups of the chai lattes I love to drink, and yet I still buy them.
This is a luxury thing.
It is all about the feeling you get when you own something so pricey, or drink something so “luxurious”.
Your enjoyment of it, increases than if you made the cup of the best coffee in the world.
Convenience, matters.
Couple that with luxury and it means you can just throw or burn money, and it doesn’t really make a dent in your finances or your life. You aren’t gasping to yourself when you burn your $65 candle. You’re enjoying it. It’s a treat.
That said, even though I understand it psychologically, I think luxury candles are where I draw the line unless they’re electric like this one:
…but even so!
