"Sir Candle Man is rooted in me because I'm obviously online, but he's almost a persona. It's like a character that I can step into and get more open, vibrant, creative, and fluid with," Kudzi Chikumbu reflects on a Wednesday morning in LA.
Self-described as the “bougie uncle guide to the world of fragrance as a lifestyle,” the influencer currently has 251.1K followers on TikTok (plus 4.1M likes) and 147K on Instagram. Visit Sir Candle Man’s accounts and you will find candle care and fragrance buying guides, travel diaries, and dating anecdotes—all delivered with an engaging dose of humor and sass.
Educational tips around candles and fine home fragrance are some of his most popular content; information presented in a "relatable, fun, entertaining, and uplifting way," as well as product recommendations to help curate a home fragrance collection; "old school listicle curation," as he describes them. As part of his home fragrance curation, Chikumbu highlights the three s’s: style, scent, and strength.
Some of his most watched TikToks include a video on how to properly extinguish candles properly, which has 2.5M views, while another on how to spray perfume has 2.9M views. Listicles like “3 bougie candles you need for your collection” also garner attention with view counts of over 700,000. Other viewers are looking for guidance on luxury fragrance investments and a regular dose of wanderlust. "There are also people who are looking for things that they have never heard of before that are expensive but worth it; these are people that like to follow my travels wherever I go in the world to see something," he explains.
When it comes to devising his content and sifting through the hundreds of yearly releases, the content creator has created a three-tier list of priorities. “The key is to find a good product; the price is secondary to me and then the importance of story over ingredients,” he explains. “When I've made content that was really digging into the ingredients and even into perfumers, most consumers truly don't care. I realized why: They don't know what amber smells like, but they can relate to the power of story to amplify fragrance. Lastly, how creative are the fragrances? It’s truly art and science, from the chemistry to the storytelling.”
Digging into the formula that made Sir Candle Man such a success, Chikumbu explains, “I learned this in a personal branding class at Stanford that was taught by Tyra Banks: different is better than better. Standing out, there's very few Black male gay influencers in fragrance who are nerdy, fun, and cool. It's either romantic French fragrance speak or dead cool. There's no one in the middle who's a person that can understand everything but translate it. There's a relatable, 'who is he' energy that I think is interesting.”
Indeed, the energy of Sir Candle Man strikes the perfect balance between cool, confident, and charismatic, while still remaining down-to-earth. He may be a purveyor of excellent olfactory taste, but also can relate to the every day struggle of the modern-day individual (like losing one’s luggage in transit). Above all, he knows how to speak about scent in a way that doesn’t feel alienating. “I get a lot of comments of people saying, ‘You describe it in a way that I can like smell it through the screen.’ That is the key to the whole thing. There's that translation, which is core to why I think Sir Candle Man works,” he adds.
His own love of scent began with his aunt bringing home perfume samples from her department store job and his mother working as a florist. Born in Zimbabwe, his family moved to Johannesburg when he was 12. He began as an African culture-focused YouTuber in 2008, also blogging about R&B, releasing his own music on SoundCloud, and posting on Tumblr—a social media polymath.
He later moved to Cape Town, where he obtained a bachelor’s degree in business science, finance, and accounting, followed by a postgraduate diploma in accounting at University of Cape Town. In 2014, his educational pursuits took him to Stanford University Graduate School of Business, where he completed a masters degree in business administration, management, and operations. An accountant by day and YouTuber by the weekend, content was always a passion point, but not always a full-time pursuit.
Candles, in particular, entered his orbit when he was visiting Paris for a Beyoncé concert in 2018. Shopping with friends in the French capital, he stumbled upon Au 17 by Maison Francis Kurkdjian and was immediately pulled into the power of olfactory storytelling. Once he returned home, Chikumbu started the Sir Candle Man account, originally intending for it to simply be a page he shared with friends, but life had other plans. With a dapper account name, quick-witted candor, and great visual eye, Sir Candle Man kept the flame burning from the get-go.
“I’ve been a content creator forever. I'm used to sitting in front of a camera, editing in your mind as you go, and putting it out. I have the muscle reps in there. Most people would say it's really hard to be a creator. It requires time, but it's not harder than anything else. What's been interesting is my own understanding of consumer preferences,” he states. “I started off in this luxury world, and then I wondered, what else can I do? I went to Bath & Body Works. I wasn’t aware of the industry of home fragrance; it was just a fun thing and those videos and my Target videos did so well. Mass fragrance has its own fan base and world that is so fun. I just wasn't tapped into that, so that was really cool to learn.”
A growing fanbase also offered up opportunities for his own scented creations. He partnered with L’Or de Seraphine on a stone fruit, fig, and cedwarwood creation (a nod to sipping a peach bellini under fig trees) called Soft Life in October 2022. It came with a heartwarming note printed on its external packaging. It reads: “I want you to know this …you deserve a beautiful and soft life. In a world that teaches you that success means working harder, gaining more achievements, and making more money, I’ve come to learn that only striving for those things will leave you exhausted. After years of working hard, I was burnt out so I took a break and reprioritized what I value—creativity, community, and wellness. I started feeling joy again, and I learned that true success in life comes from loving yourself fully every day, affirming yourself and being gentle with yourself. This is what this fragrance represents and that is my definition of a soft life.” Upon launch, the product sold out in mere minutes.
In a subsequent post speaking about the project, he candidly said, “I was really also writing that note to myself. As a young gay men, I always felt that I couldn’t be my full self so that’s what I did: I put my full self in the candle. That’s what Sir Candle Man allows me to do.” To help spread that message and support others; during Pride month 2023, 5% of Soft Life sales were donated to LGBTQ+ youth nonprofit organization GLSEN, which Chikumbu has supported over several years.
In October 2023, he released a publication in partnership with Chronicle Books: Let It Burn: Illuminate Your Life with Candles and Fragrance. “The book was so fun but also so hard at the same time. An editor [at Chronicle Books] approached me. I've always wanted to write a book, and Chronicle makes these gorgeous publications, so I said “absolutely,” he enthusiastically recalls. Inside readers will find tips on building a home fragrance collection, gift giving for every occasion, employing candles as elements of interior design, and using them as instruments of self-care. They also gain insight into his personal journey building the Sir Candle Man world. Chikumbu’s emotional openness and relatability with his audience speaks to a message that holds more weight than the sometimes solely aesthetic-focused value of fragrance—scent with substance, one might say.
In winter of that year, he released a candle with LAFCO. After chatting to the brand’s founder Jon Bresler as part of a live stream series, their conversation around vanilla absolutes led to a creative collaboration. Sending three pitches on different levels of the fragrance pyramid (top, heart, and base notes), he titled the concept on heart notes, a vanilla-themed proposal, as Heart of the Matter. And thus, the product name was born. The resulting candle (vanilla-themed, naturally, with accents of guaiacwood and cumin) was inspired by Chikumbu’s own trip to Southeast Asia, an “Eat, Pray, Love” style endeavor amid a period of professional uncertainty during his accountant days, filled with sunsets and inner reconnection. Like Soft Life, it was an immediate success.
For the future, he hopes to return to the world of podcasting (Chikumbu previously had an LA dating-focused program called (Love in Limboland) with a fragrance lifestyle themed show. As for the trends informing home and fine fragrance in the years to come, he predicts a bolder turnout for himself and his viewers. “I used to be deep into musks, skin scents, and soft sandalwoods. Now I feel like I'm in a bolder place and even my viewers, there’s a vibrancy that people are excited about in fragrance,” he explains. Fruity gourmands are high on that list. For more lifestyle-focused viewers, the impact of ingredients and wax types on health and household safety as part of a larger wellness conversation are also gaining traction.
On his must watch list are origin story-focused brands like the Mexico-inspired brand Nopalera, Latin-owned candle brand Bonita Fierce, and Ethan Gaskill’s Elsewhere Fragrances, which “speaks to that suburban upbringing that’s very Americana, which I dont think you get a lot of.” He also praises Boy Smells recent Farm to Fragrance release and experimental, genderless Canadian brand VIGYL, which describes itself as “a state of contemplation that exists at the intersection of art, tradition, community, and the senses”—overall brands that dare to do things differently. “Things don’t need to be in the barn or at the beach. I think we need to go a little deeper, you know?” he adds.
Chikumbu sees the ongoing boom in home fragrance as the result of the proliferation of online shopping as a result of the pandemic, plus increasing interests in more niche storytelling and the growing popularity of fragrance influences. “Now if you're online, you see all these people with stacks and stacks of perfumes or candles in a way that you didn't see a long time ago. People let you into their homes, so you can have these trusted sources of people to quickly check on a fragrance or a candle before purchasing,” he says. Having established himself as one of those trusted sources, with best-selling releases to match, speaks to the power of that connection. Whether he is relaxing at a beach club in Comporta or discussing the best women’s fragrances suitable for male wear, there is a growing audience eagerly anticipating Sir Candle Man’s next visit on their digital screens.
