Created with a love of nostalgia, Foxhound Collection immediately caught my attention around a year ago when I spotted the candles while shopping around downtown Halifax. I was instantly drawn to the clean, minimalist packaging and the incredible scents that were all so unique I wanted to purchase each one. I was also pleasantly surprised to see that the candles are hand poured in Nova Scotia, which made me love the brand even more. Kelsey Weir, the founder and maker behind Foxhound Collection was sweet enough to send me over some of her candles including 2 new scents for summer and answer a few of my burning (pun intended) questions about Foxhound Collection, which is now not only a candle line but a perfumery (available soon!). I hope you love Foxhound Collection as much as I do!
{Grapefruit + Fig Candle is one of the latest scents by Foxhound Collection. It’s so sweet and delicious–perfect for lightening up the mood on a warm summer night.}
Kaylee: How did you become interested in candle making? Is it something that started out as a hobby and evolved into a business or did you always want to be a maker and entrepreneur?
Kelsey: Foxhound Collection originally started as a collaboration between my boyfriend and I, completely for fun. We didn’t even tell people much about it. We experimented with everything from woodworking to wall hangings. Eventually we saw someone selling used candle making gear online and took that as an opportunity to try something new! From that day forward I fell into such a love for the process and reimagined Foxhound as my own while my partner moved focus onto his own entrepreneurial goals.
Everything from the science behind making the perfect candle to the idea that I could create a scent totally unique to me and be able to share it with others. I actually love a good combination of routine and unknowns in this business, the replication gets easier and faster with practice, but the scent blending is new and exciting every time and it doesn’t always go as planned. It was love at first sight. I find myself taking note of the scents around me more diligently now. I want to learn about all the flowers, trees and everything a new season brings so I can try to capture it.
I never could have dreamed this reality. I was never that confident, my independence was in a bad state – but my new found love made me want more and it made me go for it! It was January 2015 when I reimagined Foxhound Collection and I had given myself the one and only resolution I’ve ever made: To do this thing that I love full-time within 5 years! Fast forward just one year and this past January, Foxhound became my primary source of income!
{Wild Honey + Rose is the second newest edition to Foxhound Collection, and my favoruite scent out of the lot. It’s floral and sweet but not too overpowering. Kelsey recently launched a new line of perfumes and this was the scent I purchased (available soon).}
Kaylee: I absolutely love your scent combinations and how you draw inspiration from nostalgia. Are there special meanings behind each scent? If so, can you tell me a few?
Kelsey: Of course, thank you! So, nostalgia to me can mean very specifically the scent itself replicating something found naturally or a scent creation that I think will represent a moment and a feeling. Here’s the stories behind my two newest scents for this Spring/Summer!
Wild Honey + Rose is very scent-specific. It was just last year for me when I found real pure honey, it was made here in Nova Scotia and had such an amazing natural flavour of wildflowers along with being kind of smokey and tart. I think I ate that one (fairly large) jar of honey in less than a month and spent my time researching all about the varieties of raw honey that I’d been missing out on. I still can’t believe it and am obsessed with how nature can create something so beautiful.
On the ‘moment’ side of nostalgia, I wanted to create a feeling for the ultimate Summer adventure, which ended up in the form of Grapefruit + Fig. This scent to me is the epitome of that perfect weather day. Where you get to leave the house at sunrise and stay out all day, drive with the windows down, have a lakeside picnic, get together with friends, the list could go on. It is YOUR perfect Summer and it’s whatever you want it to be, that’s the moment that matters.
Something I’ve found very exciting is that because I’m sharing these scents as a story, people have started to tell me their own. I love this so much, all of our experiences with scent are different and yet here we are completely understanding each other because of this common ground in a single candle. It’s not something I intended on happening but am so happy it has!
Kaylee: How did you come up with the name “Foxhound Collection?”
Kelsey: I’ve been trying to think of a good story for this question – but simply, I don’t really know! As I was saying earlier, this all started as a fun experiment for my partner and I and we had never planned for it to go anywhere, I’ve never changed the name since we made it up. Originally the ‘Collection’ meant our collection of items from different mediums but I think it suits my fragrances really well in that way too. It’s become such a regular name in my house at this point and I wouldn’t have it any other way. It will always remind me of what once was and how it all came to be, in some ways it still is my house for experimentation as I have no idea what I might be interested in exploring later or collaborations I might want to bring in.
{Earl Grey is one of Foxhound Collections original scents. Blended with tea leaves, sweet herbs and a touch of cedar, this is the perfect candle to burn come fall.}
Kaylee: I am also a huge fan of your packing. Can you tell me a little about the branding process of Foxhound Collection?
Kelsey: Thank you! It’s not something I get to talk about often but I’ve always been a huge fan of design. Be it furniture, architecture, fashion or print – it helps that my boyfriend is a graphic designer and so his own more in-depth interest for design has certainly rubbed off. I love the clean-lined, modern look, but I think the labels have this subtle classic feel too, like an old record keeping book. Aside from that I really wanted something that would let the scent do the talking, it is there to tell a story and inspire new memories. So there are no embellishments, the label is very intentional in information and layout. The scent itself being the most important part. I know I am one of hundreds in the popularity of minimalist branding out there these days, but there really is purpose behind every square inch of that packaging.
Kaylee: I’ve seen via Instagram that you are soon launching your perfume oils (so exciting!). Did you feel like this was a natural transition for you? Do you plan on expanding your brand even further?
Kelsey: I’m so excited for them! Expanding the line was never something I’d even thought of, I had this lovely customer tell me once that she would take some candle wax and warm it between her fingers to apply as perfume because she loved it so much. Which I thought was genius, but it got the ball rolling and I was researching the art of perfumery in no time. The perfume oils are in glass bottles with stainless steel roller ball, they have a super moisturizing base of coconut oils and vitamin E. I’m most excited for the freedom this opens up in scent creation, I’ve had a handful of fragrances that I’ve loved but didn’t work out the way I wanted as a candle, so now I get to bring them back and show them off in perfumes! They’ve been a long time coming and I’m really excited for their official release, date TBA but hopefully later June.
There is definitely more for the future! I’m taking my love of nostalgia outside the realm of scent and have started designing patterns for silk scarves to also release later this Summer! They’ll be handmade by a wonderful studio in Montreal with ethically sourced fabrics and eco-friendly inks.
Aside from a product expansion, I’ll be moving the studio to a bigger space! This will also allow me to have a small retail section that I hope to fill with all my most coveted brands, plus have workshops and pop-ups to help grow our small but thriving local community here in Truro, Nova Scotia!
