Behind our Van Gogh Fragrance Collection

This Sunday, August 8 is the first-ever 808 Day, an annual celebration of Hawai‘i, and will take place at "Beyond Van Gogh: An Immersive Experience" presented by Honolulu Magazine. The celebration will feature a locally curated boutique highlighting exclusive "Beyond Van Gogh" Hawai‘i merch including the two custom candle fragrances we created inspired by the iconic art pieces of Vincent Van Gogh, Starry Night and Sunflower! 

It was such an honor to have been asked to create candles for the Beyond Van Gogh event. When we were approached by Honolulu Magazine to make the candles, I immediately knew I wanted to make a Starry Night and a Sunflower fragrance. For Starry Night, I could imagine myself walking through the wheat fields with the cypress trees nearby and cold crisp night air filling my lungs as I stared at the twinkling stars above in the vast dark night sky. When I have an idea of what fragrance I want to create, my mind jumps immediately to the fragrance oils that I would blend together to create the entire concept. In order to achieve the Starry Night fragrance I added notes of cypress, moss, bayberry, balsam and fir. After creating the first sample of the fragrance I immediately fell in love with it!

Starry Night Collection

For Sunflower, my approach to creating the fragrance was inspired more by the idea of walking through a sunflower field, smelling the earth and the idea of cutting fresh wildflowers to put in a vase on your kitchen table. That's why Sunflower has notes of wildflowers, birch, geranium and citrus!

Sunflower Collection

Creating the fragrance was the easy part...it was the label design that was the challenge. I wanted the labels that would do Van Gogh justice and feature his artwork all while conforming to the shape of our candle vessels, but initially it just didn't look right! That is when I asked one of my close friends and talented contemporary artist, Robin Appasamy, to help me edit Van Gogh’s art to be a custom design for the candles. Being able to work on this project was such an honor for both of us and we were so humbled to have had access to the digital artwork of Van Gogh. I am so grateful to have had her help in creating the labels. They turned out much better than I could have imagined!

On August 8, we will also be going LIVE on Instagram from the Beyond Van Gogh exhibit at the Hawaii Convention Center at 4:00 p.m. HST to show you the boutique and all the fun things happening that day at the exhibit! We are so grateful for the opportunity to work on this project! We hope that when you smell and burn this candle, you'll remember your Beyond Van Gogh experience and imagine yourself in the Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night and Sunflower scenes. Click here, to book your tickets now! 

For more information about artist Robin Appasamy, visit her website or follow her on IG @artist_robinappasamy!