Second Generation Candle Making
A love letter to my mom (my candle-making inspiration!)
I wanted to take a beat to talk about the beginning of Nette. With Q4 breathing down my neck, this business of mine has taken up almost all of my brain real estate for the last few weeks and more evenings than not, I’m finding myself working until midnight after the dinnertime/bathtime/bedtime routine for our 2.5 year old, Ozzie, is done. When I’m feeling tired and achy and can’t see an end in sight, it helps me remember the why behind all of it. So, I thought I would write it out here.
It all started in a candle shop on the water in San Francisco. My mom’s shop. I can still remember the smell when you walked in—wax melting down in metal pots, the faint ocean air threading its way through the door. She would hand-dip and carve candles all day, building shapes and layers with a patience I’ve never had.
That’s the part that has stayed with me most: the patience. Candles are a slow medium. They’re not flashy. They don’t demand attention the way a red lipstick or a new bag does. They change the atmosphere quietly. They sit in the background until you notice that the room feels better, warmer, calmer. That’s the magic.
When I moved to New York, I ran in the opposite direction—fashion, publishing, social media, all things fast. I worked at ELLE for years in the Devil Wears Prada era of the 2000s when the fashion industry was glamorous in a way I don’t know it will ever be again. And then I started a social media agency the same year Instagram launched, advising fashion, beauty, and lifestyle brands on how to shape their digital presence. I loved it. But in 2020, when the pandemic hit and I lost half my agency’s clients in a matter of weeks, something shifted. I kept coming back to those childhood days in the shop, to the candles lined up in the window. It felt like a sign to try.
Nette was born in that moment. My mom didn’t live to see this journey all the way through with me (she passed away late last year), but I think she would’ve been proud of how far we’ve come since launching in 2021 with just four candles. She might have laughed at how obsessive I became about ingredients, how I tested every wax blend until we landed on one that burned slow and clean. But mostly, I think she’d recognize the impulse. The same one she had: to make something that quietly changes the air.
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