THE HOURGLASS

Jill Roy began making candles over a decade ago as a hobby—and as a way to experiment with color blocking. “I was obsessed with Mark Rothko,” Roy says. “So when I first started out doing candles in molds, I would create these layers of colors. They would start out kind of orange, and then they would get kind of brown, and then they would go kind of pink, and then it would be kind of mustardy or grey. You never knew what the candle was going to look like until you pulled it out of the mold.”

After a few years of playing around, Roy founded Something Wicked in 2002. In a market saturated with overpowering fragrances and questionable ingredients, Something Wicked candles were in a class of their own. Each one was handmade with soy wax, hemp wicks, and the subtlest blend of essential oils. Soon, Roy's candles were stocked at boutiques like Calypso in Nolita and Tauk in Montauk. Keeping up with the avalanche of orders sometimes meant that Roy, who also ran a production company, would enlist the help of her production staff. “If we were having a down day at the production company, my assistants would help me make candles,” Roy says. “We would work around my dining room table. At one point, everybody knew how to make candles. Even my nanny would get in on it.”

After a five-year hiatus, Roy is returning to candle-making with an exquisite custom candle for Whisper. Made from plant-based wax, hemp-core wick, and essential oils and natural fragrances of the highest quality, the exclusive Whisper Candle is a blend of tobacco and cassis, infused with notes of sandalwood and Madagascar vanilla. “I love woodsy, masculine scents, but I also love some floral notes,” Roy says. “I wanted to bring the two together, the masculine and feminine, so that they marry each other in the candle.”