Buy This: Hotel Scents At Home

With the right candles

The Chiltern Firehouse in London is my favorite hotel in the world. Granted, I haven’t been as many places as the intrepid Yolanda Edwards, but I’ve stayed in some wonderful joints (Ett Hem gives it a run for it’s money) and I cannot fathom how a hotel could be much better - certainly not on the design front.

One of my favorite, simple touches is the bedside telephone. It shouldn’t be so revolutionary, but it is just that: a simple phone. In most hotels, the phone could double as a workstation - big, bulky, confusing - with 5 or 6 different numbers to dial based on what you need. I spend an inordinate amount of time wondering if my particular request is best suited to the concierge, the front desk, or housekeeping. It’s complication for complications sake, and hotels are full of these tiny, ill considered missteps.

At the Chiltern, next to the phone is a handwritten note that boils it all down to the essentials: “Dial 0 for anything.” I love it.

(They also use real keys at the Chiltern, not swipe cards, a detail I love. You can leave your key at the front desk when you leave for the day.)

Aside from being stupendously well designed by the French firm Studio KO, the place exceeds even beyond the visual. Miraculously, the hotel has the most distinctive smell of any place I’ve ever been. It is a mouth-watering, extremely memorable scent.

After going down the rabbit hole (as I often do) I discovered the scent was a bespoke creation from London-based perfumer Azzi Glasser. As she described in this piece for Mr. Porter, the scent was based on a fictional story of a traveling salesman from the 1930’s, and “has lots of rich, expensive ingredients in there. It’s got notes of frankincense, myrrh. It’s got wood notes as well and then it’s also got a few hints of spice.”

The good news: they’ve used that same heady scent in their candle, available online. We’ve purchased them in the past, and the intense scent memory is instantly transporting.

In the meantime, I decided not to stomach the shipping costs, so instead I stocked up on these candles from the Chateau Marmont, the iconic LA property from Andre Balazs, the same owner as the Firehouse.

Candles in general seem to be way more expensive than I would have expected, but I love the little bit of joy these things bring me - a reminder of past trips and future possibilities.