A trip to a candlemaking class at a Brooklyn “speakeasy”

By Winnie McCroy

Stepping into the Nose Best candle shop, I’m engulfed in the heady aroma of botanical room sprays, smoky smudge sticks, incense, and invigorating shower bombs. And so many candles! Arthur Ave smells of pistachio cannoli; Garden Hoe blends tomato leaf and eucalyptus—the owners delight in giving their scents cheeky names.

I had trekked to the Nose Best storefront in Bushwick to join a candlemaking class to create my own signature scent. I entered the shop through an obscured door and wandered down a mazelike hallway to a back-room “speakeasy.”

Using droppers, I mix tinctures on scent strips and choose redwood and high tide—complementary scents on the fragrance wheel.

“I feel like a mad scientist,” exclaims the woman next to me as she carefully measures and stirs tinctures in a tiny beaker. I pick a candle vessel and insert the wick. Then I pour molten soy wax and my custom scent mixture into the vessel, create a bespoke label, and wait. While the candles set, my classmates and I listen to beats and drink wine under gleaming disco balls.

This immersive experience is the brainchild of Brittany Furnari, Advertising and Marketing Communications ’17, a new offering at the multisensory shop she opened in 2021 with longtime bestie Cristian Abbrancati. At their high school prom, the two vowed to escape Long Island and succeed in the big city—and they actually have. Four years after graduating from FIT, Furnari began selling candles online, quickly landing a coveted Urban Outfitters account. It was early in the pandemic, and customers, cloistered at home, loved the cozy candles accompanied by a cocktail recipe and Spotify playlist, curated by Abbrancati.

This year, Furnari used her marketing savvy to move the business to “the next natural thing”: candle making, custom perfume making, and self-guided reed diffuser workshops. It proved a wildly successful pivot after a slow summer. They’ve attracted guests from Connecticut and upstate New York, and hosted bachelorette parties and corporate team-building events for companies such as Checkout.com, Live Nation, and Luminary. Furnari says they plan to expand the store while holding tight to their core mission: “We started this to bring joy during the pandemic, and we’re still on that journey of connecting isolated people and making sure community stays alive.”

One of Nose Best’s first collaborations was with the Museum of Sex, and shoppers still grab that Sex Symbol leather- and suede-scented candle off the shelves. The current bestseller is Mountain Daddy, an oakmoss and rosemary scent that went viral on TikTok, thanks to Furnari’s engaging grassroots marketing efforts.