The Art of Brand Storytelling with WAX Atelier
“We imagine stories before we do anything.
The story is definitely the beginning, and it runs all the way through.”
Image shot by Aloha Bonser-Shaw, all images courtesy of WAX Atelier
Wax Works: A Story Of Light And Delight.
In this enlightening conversation, we talk to WAX Atelier co-founder Lola Lely about discovering the warm and fragrant world of wax, the importance of fostering connections and collaboration, and why everything begins with imagining the story.
WAX Atelier is a London-based studio created in 2017 by Lola and Yesenia Thibault-Picazo. Using natural materials and traditional techniques, they make hand-dipped candles and a seasonal collection of distinctive wax-based objects and textiles.
Their goods are stocked worldwide. They’ve collaborated with Toast, Liberty, and Burberry and created a wax sculpture for the Royal Academy of Arts.
Read on to discover the creative joy of exploring one material, the challenges of scaling an intentionally slow business and the importance of nurturing young talent through ancient craft.
Q: I’m curious why you are so fascinated and obsessed with wax. What is it about the material and why did you choose it as the one you wanted to work with?
A: WAX Atelier was founded in 2017 by Yusenia and me. We both come from a design and craft background. Craft wasn't what we studied, but this is where we found our interest and curiosity because we both explore ideas through materiality and making.
Craft led us into the world of all these fascinating traditions and materials that have been around forever. How we came to wax was through our teaching roles. We both taught at Central Saint Martins on a course called ‘Material Futures’. One of the briefs to the students was to choose a material and really go into depth, to understand everything about it from its cultural history to its future potential.
The outcome was so interesting that we became fascinated with that approach. We’ve never given ourselves that kind of task and that sort of focus to look at a material and really understand its breadth and what its future possibility could be.
So we both discussed what material we could look at, which had been overlooked, perhaps, or something that was almost in front of us that we hadn't really thought about very much. We came to the conclusion that wax featured in both our works, many times on different projects.
So we said, well, it must be wax.
Once we started thinking about wax, I thought, actually, this is such a universal material. Everyone knows what wax is and what a candle is. But I bet you nobody actually really knows the material or has touched the raw material, including ourselves. That's when we really went deep into it and decided to find some wax and to start playing with it.
Luckily for us, just around the corner from our workshop is a beekeeper - The London Honeyman and he gave us some wax and we just thought this was an incredible material because it features in so many different disciplines from food to fine arts to everyday households and we just said, okay, so let's start exploring wax. And it all took off from there.
We learned how to make our first candles. We looked on YouTube and found all of these obscure videos about people making candles in their backyards. So we invented some tools of our own, started making some candles, and just found the whole material fascinating.
After that, we held some workshops. We like to share our craft and see how other people engage with it.
From then on, it's just become something much bigger and broader than we imagined. It's turned into a business, but it has created opportunities for ourselves, the brand, and other people in the community. Since 2017, lots of people have come through our doors, whether through collaborations with brands or through employing and training local people.
When we're working with others, it's the vehicle for us to connect with other people. Making is so tangible and tactile, which is something we're losing more and more because lots of people aren't connected to materials or making anymore, and so much is digital now.
We've shown that it's beyond fun, you can turn it to business as well.
Q: I'm very interested in the stories of brands and particularly with makers and people that are really skilful at something and have really mastered a particular craft. I was interested in the meaning of candles. If we focus on that as the main way people encounter or think of wax. There's so much significance, isn't there, to candles in our cultures and in our daily lives and the way we use them, is that something you've looked into?
Definitely. We always consider the user experience and rituals and traditions because having a ritual connects you to moments, the past, and the present. Also, you can create new rituals that are completely your own.
Our starting point was something very traditional. We're always looking or thinking about the way we live now and the potential of how we could live and our spaces in the future. That's where we create new products or have a twist on something traditional to create something innovative. It's always going backwards and forwards and having those cross-references, which intrigues us.
It's a bit of anthropology, so you've got this candle, but now we have lighting, we turn on a light bulb and you get bright light, and the candlelight isn't as strong as, say, a light bulb, but it gives you a different type of light and it creates a different type of mood. Candlelight really does create a different atmosphere. Or if you light a candle early in the morning, it does something, it sort of opens up another realm and a different kind of perspective.
It's perishable, and it's precious. Some people say they don't want to burn their candles because they’re too precious. But when you do it, you realise the beauty of things. Sometimes, you have to lose things as well. But then, on the reverse side, we make these wax flowers. It's a bit of a dialogue about things that are to be thrown away. We want to create a really lifelike flower that lasts almost forever, that goes against cut flowers.
So we’re always slightly controversial in a very light way, where we're sort of saying the opposite of things, because we want to make a point of that. But we try to do it in a beautiful and functional way by just making people think, and because we've come from a place of naivety as well.
Q: I love that you still have that same curiosity for what else is possible. You're always approaching everything with that thought and interest. We've covered the craft side of WAX Atelier really beautifully. I'm interested in how you balance that with the commercial parts of the business. It’s been really interesting to watch how you've grown and to see the success you're having. But how do you balance this very slow, thoughtful, beautiful craft that you're doing with the realities and practicalities of making it a business?
Well, in terms of the practicality, we've had to upscale quite a bit. It's still handmade, but the actual tools that we have are scaled-up versions of what we were doing when we were making a batch of five candles. So we've just had to design things. We have this carousel, it's almost like a contraption basically, it goes around and around, and then you have its cantilevers, and we designed that and got that made in Denmark. It's looking at our tools and thinking about problem-solving and finding ways of making the process more efficient for us without compromising on the quality. We had to think about maintaining the craft, but also commercially and on a humanitarian level.
We’re always thinking about how we can improve, how we can do things better. By default, I think that’s helped us produce more candles or products because the orders started to come in. It's really lovely to have people like your products and want to buy them.
Q: From a brand story point of view, your storytelling hasn't changed. It’s so consistent and still feels very personal, slow and beautiful. How have you managed to maintain that despite scaling up?
From day one, we've always been like that, maybe sometimes to our detriment, where we imagine stories before we do anything.
We're very visual people, and thankfully, because we have a design and practical background, we can make certain things a reality. We've got lots of different skill sets in the studio — a photographer, a designer, makers, and people who can write and speak well. We're a team of just five people, but it feels very natural. It's the business side that we've had to learn to navigate rather than the design and storytelling side.
Q: I love the expression you used of ‘imagining the stories at the beginning.’ Can you tell me a bit more about that? Is it the final product or how you present it to people?
The story is definitely the beginning, and it runs all the way through. In the beginning we're influenced by lots of different things in terms of our cultural background and where we live in East London. It's very multicultural, history, film, theatre, all these sorts of things we pick up and we have a conversation about, and it's just the way we work; it's very collaborative. These ideas almost percolate and build on it, and then it's always based on what we feel we would like to manifest.
We don’t ever think, ‘Oh, you know, maybe people would like this’, we don’t ever say that to ourselves when we decide to do something; we're very impractical. We just think, ‘Oh, we like that’ and therefore we just go and do it.
Then we buckle down and get to the practicalities, and we do things on a shoestring most of the time. There has been no investment in our business; we've just done everything with our own money from our own pockets, and we give it a shot and see where it goes.
When people ask us where the ideas come from, that's where - we give ourselves time to reflect and allow inspiration to come. Then we just go and do it and see what happens. If it’s successful then great we'll make another batch, but if not, it doesn't matter we still enjoy just doing it.
We’ve been quite lucky most of the things that we've tried out it's been really well received.
Q: I think that can be really helpful to creative people running businesses. There can be so much pressure as you've got to think of the market, and actually, your confidence and clarity of your purpose and vision are obviously so strong that you can create things with this sense of risk and freedom that you believe and trust in it. When you're willing to go all in and not doubt or compromise, it creates something that's so much stronger and really resonates.
Definitely. There are a few brands out there that we've encountered that are doing great work. But most of the time, we don't look outside. A business guru would probably say you should do your market research, you should look at everything, but sometimes you shouldn't because the minute you do that, you start to self-doubt, and it's quite intimidating. I mean, you can look all day. And I think sometimes it’s good to think about what you would want.
We would never release anything or do anything that we didn't enjoy or thought didn’t have some sort of value or purpose to us. That has been our philosophy from day one, and it hasn't changed. That is why we just really like coming to work and doing what we're doing.
Q: What's the next chapter for the WAX Atelier story? What's the thing that you're curious about at the moment and that you're experimenting with?
The next chapter is that we have a new premises in Abney Park in Stoke Newington, that was granted to us by Hackney Council and the Abney Park Trust. It's a place where we are going to create and interact and engage more with the public. So that's very exciting. It's going to be an experimental space and it's right in the middle of the cemetery so we'll see the changing seasons as there are about 180 species of trees in the park. And there's all this history in terms of the people who were in the artistic community who lived here and they are buried in the cemetery. So it has quite a powerful history and narrative with the nature around it.
Our first project is going to be with young people between the ages of 18 to 24. We're going to be working with them, with the raw materials and inspiration from the Park to create a collection of unique things. We can't say what yet, but it's going to be really interesting. Collaborating with that age group is going to be interesting because they've got a lot of ideas, but also a lot of challenges. So we're really keen to tap in and cross-pollinate ideas and create something new for us as well
And the other new chapter is that WAX Atelier will be delving into the world of aromatics. So we're looking at one species - which is going to be the orange - and we're going to explore it in all its different guises to create a collection of very naturally fragrant things.
Q: I love the way you say things with the openness to what that might be. You mentioned you don’t like to look at what your competitors are doing but are there other brands, perhaps in totally different industries that you really love, particularly in terms of storytelling?
There's a collective called Assemble, they’re taking architecture into art and into this whole culture of making and living. They're so interesting. They are curators at the Royal Academy of Arts this year, and they won a Turner Prize. It's interesting how thinking of the practice that is about the built environment, but can steer and veer into all sorts of directions. But there's definitely a running thread, and you make connections.
The other brand is Ffern. We love that they work with the seasons, launching projects, creating beautiful films and the narrative around it all is quite special. We’ve had a conversation with them in the past about collaborating, so there’s definitely something there, a synergy between us. I think they work in a very inventive and imaginative, but also sensitive, way. And you can feel that through their imagery and the product is very special.
Thank you to Lola for taking time to share her insights on how they approach so many aspects of their business, it was such an interesting and inspiring conversation. You can find WAX Atelier’s latest work on their website and follow along with their story on Instagram.
Want to discover more brilliant brands? The stories continue on Instagram @simplemattersmedia and sign up for our monthly newsletter ‘StoryWorks’