Text by Arabelle Sicardi / Illustration by W Studio

For 21of21, GOOGLE SHOPPING and PAPER came together to break down some of the most memorable shopping moments of 2021 based on Google's trending search data. We were all ready for a change this year, starting with the mood-setting scents in our home. Google search interest for Goop’s “vagina candle,” reached an all-time high in January of this year in the US.

One of the biggest rushes I’ve gotten in the past two years is standing under the window of a bakery, and smelling the melting chocolate and caramelized butter — a wave of smell so immense it wove its way through my N95 mask filter. (The bigger rush was, of course, taking off my mask when there was no one else around and inhaling raw, unfiltered smells. Wild, I know.) There are other rushes, other smells that have become a celebration of the once ordinary and now resilient: The smell of street food returning, the smell of neighborhood garden plots freshly planted.

Trying to replicate these moments of ordinary life, these smells, has become more than a passing interest to people who have been working from home for more than a year and a half now. Candle sales have increased up to 17% according to the National Candle Association, so much so that there have been labor shortages due to the unexpected surge in demand combined with supply chain shortages overall. People want their own Proustian Madeline experiences from the safety of their home. Anything but the monotony of your masked mouth-breath feels like a celebration now.

Not unrelatedly, scented candles have taken on new significance in smell recovery for people who have gotten COVID. In a scraped study of candle reviews over the duration of the pandemic, more people have complained that the scented candles they received had no fragrance at all. The Google search terms for scented candles and anosmia, the medical term for the loss of smell, are sister lay-lines on a chart that spans the entire pandemic thus far. Some medical professionals have suggested olfactory training to help patients who’ve lost their sense of smell after viral infection — a practice that can span months and involve any kind of smell that triggers memories: Herbs, essential oils or a long-time favorite scent. More than once I’ve lit a candle in the house and thanked the universe I could still smell it — all clear, so far.

Group chats are carousels of memes, flowers from the farmer’s market, failed baking attempts and making fun of far-too-targeted product marketing. A candle, named Student Loans, once dropped into the chat, elicited ghost emojis. Some memories don’t need a fragrance to call forth strong emotions. The candle’s notes are decidedly normal, a combination of coconut and musk. Not like the hallways of a Student Loans Department at all. Sometimes the provocation is just the name, of course. Goop’s Smell’s Like My Vagina candle earns that notoriety, when in reality it too smells more accurately of rose, cedar and bergamot.

More personally, there’s been a rise in candles that pay tribute to smells across the Asian diaspora. Someone suggested I try Jia Home Company’s Bunny White, a toy candle that’s supposed to smell like a White Rabbit candy. Riveted by the mere description of a candy that occupied my childhood, I added one to my own cart. So many candles smell reminiscent of clean laundry, amber, the ocean — and all those smells are relaxing, but not necessarily a reminder of home to all that come across them. But White Rabbit? That delivers me right into the candy aisle of the Chinese Supermarket, I am eight years old again and I get to buy whatever I want after Chinese School. That, more than any other smell, feels like a nostalgia I’d put down money for. I can practically taste it: Plasticine, gummy, sweet and vanilla, like an Asian Airhead in the shape of a Tootsie Roll. There are other very specific candles across all kinds of experiences: Bai Sun’s Mooncake Candles, Boba Lab Company’s Watermelon Soju Candle.

For some brands like D.S and Durga, famous for their unconventional smells (“Debaser,” named after a song by The Pixies, and “Burning Barbershop” are long-time favorites), sales have tripled. There is their New York candle, with notes of the city embedded in the wax: Big Apple (fragrance fans never miss a pun), Chinatown cedar, bootleg cologne, honeysuckle and garments, pavement and oak. On the occasions I’ve FaceTimed with friends, they’ve shown me their growing collections of candles tucked between their plant collections vines and thorns. They’ve lit their homes with a rotating wash of colors like a James Turrell exhibition to match their moods. We’ve mailed each other our favorite discoveries: Obscure beeswax candles hand twisted on local farms, candles that look like succulents alongside near succulents, Ardent Candle’s Fruit Loop candles and polaroids of ourselves with our matching ones at home.

The kitschier the candle, the more we celebrate a break from the monotony of something more serious. More than anything, we want to make each other laugh and feel comforted, even if we can’t be in the same room. Even if some people have moved away, moved home or passed on. We want to celebrate each other; candles have always been part of that ritual, it’s just now they can be endlessly particular, odd and eccentric, just like we are. Many cultures have long had highly specialized candles as part of our more vulnerable moments of grief, hope and happiness. Now we’ve just got more options to summon memories with, in all their brilliant specificity. The rise of “unusual” candle smells is a sign that even more than beauty, people want something interesting.

Uniformly sanitized fragrances are comforting, but only to a point. After enough hours of burning vanilla you begin to fantasize about what other smells are compelling, and ultimately you search for something that is more true to memories of what real life can be: Nuanced, sometimes ugly, tangy, sour, sweet. The smell of fresh laundry and fire hydrants running, and a barbeque, slightly burning the meat, with a side of too-artificial-but-delicious ices down the street. That isn’t a weird fragrance, it’s just a true-to-life smellscape, and that is what people are aching for right now. We search for things that move us, frighten us, intrigue us, transport us into memories or alternate futures that let us know we’ll get somewhere new eventually. We just have to keep breathing. No small feat.

VP of Production: Katie Karole, Creative Director: Jordan Bradfield, Digital Director: Justin Moran, Art Director: Malcolm Mammone, Managing Editor (21of21): Laia Garcia-Furtado, Managing Editor (PAPER): Eliza Weinreb