Wellness brand Luminos has announced its newest product line, "Authentic Burnout," a collection of artisanal candles designed for people who are, in the company's words, "too exhausted to perform wellness anymore."
The line features seven scents, each named for a specific variety of modern depletion. "Inbox Zero (Impossible)" is described as "a crisp, aspirational fragrance that smells like the email you haven't answered yet." "Deadline Lavender" combines traditional lavender aromatherapy with "the subtle undertone of a project that was due last Thursday." "The Meeting That Could Have Been an Email" is, according to the product description, "a complex blend of conference room air, stale coffee, and the specific despair of watching someone share their screen."
The remaining four scents — "Performative Self-Care," "Hustle Culture Detox," "Quiet Quitting (The Candle)," and "I'm Fine (I'm Not Fine)" — complete what Luminos is calling "a full emotional arc of contemporary professional life."
"We noticed that our customers were buying wellness products to recover from the stress of buying wellness products," said Luminos founder Cressida Vane in a press release. "We wanted to meet them where they are, which is on the couch, not doing the thing they said they were going to do."
The candles are priced at $68 each, or $420 for the full collection, which Luminos describes as "an investment in acknowledging that you are not okay, which is the first step toward being okay, or at least toward smelling like you might be okay someday."
The launch has been covered extensively in wellness culture publications, several of which praised the brand for its "radical honesty" and "disruptive approach to self-care." One reviewer called "The Meeting That Could Have Been an Email" "the most emotionally accurate candle I have ever encountered."
Critics of the line have noted that $68 is a significant amount of money to spend on a candle that smells like burnout, and that the money might be better spent on, for example, not working so much. Luminos has not responded to this criticism, possibly because they are also burned out.
The brand satire space has been crowded lately, but Luminos appears to have identified a genuine gap in the market: products that acknowledge the absurdity of the wellness industry while still being products in the wellness industry. It's a move that requires either remarkable self-awareness or none at all, and it's genuinely unclear which one this is.
The "Authentic Burnout" collection is available on the Luminos website and at select product culture retailers. The website notes that shipping takes 7-10 business days, "because we are also understaffed."
The Spoof Daily reached out to several people who had purchased the candles for comment. Most of them said they hadn't had time to light them yet.