The Essential List 08. Ali LaBelle's Favorite Things That Smell Good
The creative director shares her go-to candle, a beautiful rose water, scents that make cleaning more enjoyable, and ideas for fueling creativity.
Today, I’m delighted to feature Ali LaBelle, an LA-based creative director and strategist and the woman behind Pasta Girlfriend. Her newsletter,
, is a visual feast that’s packed with dreamy mood boards, creative insights from over a decade of experience in the world of branding and strategy, and fantastic recommendations across art, home, fashion, beauty and more.First, Ali shares her favorite things that smell good. Then, I share our conversation about discovery and shopping online, the importance of crediting artists and sharing their stories, scavenger hunting for inspiration in unexpected places, and the benefits of fueling your creative practice. Enjoy!
Santa Maria Novella Acqua di Rose I love this rose water spray for a few reasons: for one, it’s beautiful enough to keep on display; I leave one on my bedside table, one on my desk, and one on my vanity so I’m not constantly dragging it around with me. It lasts forever, too! My only complaint is that it’s too heavy and large to throw in my bag to bring on the go…but sometimes I do it anyway, especially in the summer.
Maison Louis Marie No.04 Candle I pretty much have a candle burning at all times, and I go through them pretty quickly, so every Black Friday I stock up on these to last me through the year. I definitely gravitate towards woody, warm scents year round, and this sandalwood/vetiver/amber wood combo feels more “in the woods” than “by a fireplace” to me, making it the perfect thing.
Thieves oil (any brand) I’m not an essential-oils-for-everything girl, HOWEVER, thieves oil is my go-to whenever I’m feeling sick or under allergic attack. Dropping a bit of it onto the floor of my shower and letting the room steam up does wonders for my sinuses, and I’ll even put a bit of it on my wool dryer balls when I’m washing my sheets every once in a while.
OSEA Vagus Nerve Pillow Mist Again, I’m no expert on the medicinal properties of essential oils, but I really like a spritz of this on my pillow when I need to calm myself down at night. Supposedly it stimulates the vagus nerve, which is the longest nerve in the body and is responsible for a lot of the parasympathetic function between our brains, hearts, and digestive systems. Vagus nerve stimulation has been found to help with depression, and there’s work being done to understand its effect on arthritis, headaches, digestive issues, and more. I use it on nights where I’m feeling down or anxious and, whether it's a placebo effect or not, it helps me sleep.
Homecourt Cece cleaning products Courteney Cox really did something with Homecourt, her line of household cleaning products. I will find any excuse to avoid cleaning my kitchen—I absolutely hate doing dishes—but the countertop spray and dish soap make it a little less painful. My favorite scent, Cece, is sort of leathery and warm, not unlike the Maison Louis Marie candle I love, and definitely beats the artificial lemon scent injected into most cleaning products.
Ricola Menta di Montagna drops My friends make fun of me because I’m always sucking on a Ricola, which are definitely more candy than they are mints. But they smell so good!!! I stocked up on a trip to Europe last year, then again when I found them for sale at Bucatini here in LA, but I’m down to my last box and might need to turn to Amazon to replenish.
Tell me about your background and what you’re doing today.
I'm from Southern California and I moved to LA 12 years ago to start working as a graphic designer. I was interning at a bunch of random places to get a graphic design education and ended up working for a company called ban.do. It was an incredible education in branding—I learned a lot about branding from the inside and how a brand identity stretches across social media and partnerships and digital marketing and events.
It's like all of my hobbies and everything I love to do is all wrapped up in my job and it's so fun.
In 2021, I started my own design studio and it's been wonderful—I love working for myself. I mostly work on brand identities and in design, but I consult across the board on anything visual. It's like all of my hobbies and everything I love to do is all wrapped up in my job and it's so fun. My clients all tend to have a real appreciation for art and design. It’s great that the clients I tend to attract and the projects I take on are all things that I would use or like in my normal life.
I also run an Instagram account called Pasta Girlfriend, which started as a side project and now it's like a part-time job that I do in a fun way. Through Pasta Girlfriend I host dinners and events, and do collaborations that are all at the intersection of art and design and food—specifically pasta, obviously. I also write a newsletter called À La Carte.
How do you discover new fragrances and scented goods? Do you trust a scent description online?
I don’t consider myself any sort of fragrance expert and I’m allergic to a lot of things so I’m definitely not going and smelling a bunch of scents in person—it's an instant headache for me. I do trust descriptions in some capacity because I know that I'm attracted to certain scents. I tend to gravitate towards pretty masculine fragrances. I love a floral scent on other people, but personally I want tobacco and leather and things like that. I like scents that are woody or forest-adjacent—I love cypress, anything evergreen or Christmas tree-like, and things that smell more natural than synthetic.
When I'm trying to make a decision about whether something feels right for me, I know that if it's using those keywords that it's probably pretty close to what I would like to wear. But there's always room for a surprise when you order something online. Boy Smells has a lot of scents that I like. Cowboy Kush is kind of smoky and it smells like you're literally out in the desert—it has a sense of place to it, which I love.
Outside of fragrance, how are you discovering new brands and products? Are there any brands you love and think more people should know about?
If you go to a store in LA you’ll see the same things over and over—everyone's buying from the same places. The internet is such a wealth of information and there are so many small independent shops, businesses, and brands that you really can only discover online. I follow a million people and look to people I trust, but I also spend a lot of time going on e-commerce sites that carry multiple small brands and then I'll look into who they are.
There's a store in Philly called Quail Store and their curation is just so great. They carry things that I've never heard of and that's one I look to a lot to discover new brands. Salter House in New York is another one where I discover a lot of new things. I do a lot of vintage shopping on Etsy. I don't buy much on Etsy that’s not vintage.
I'm not scared to order something new online and just see how it goes. I think some people are hesitant to order something they’ve never heard of or to take a chance on something that no one has told them about. I'm like, let me just order it and see how it goes. What's the worst that could happen? I’ll return it?
One of my favorite things about your newsletter is the artists and designers that you spotlight. Can you share a few that you really love?
It's really important to look into who is behind the things that we're all looking at. Platforms like Pinterest and Instagram are wonderful modes of discovery, but so often an artist’s name will end up totally disconnected from their work. I'll see some things everywhere with no idea who created them and have to resort to reverse Google image search in order to identify the artist.
Inspiration culture, where we feel like we have the right to access everything, can be a real disservice to artists. In my newsletter, I prioritize sharing artists—not only their work, but also who they are as individuals. I believe we have a responsibility to be more aware of the people behind the things we’re looking at.
Andie Dinkin is one that I love. She's a painter and does these big, sweeping soiree-like paintings with little vignettes of people sitting at tables and dancing. Her work is so beautiful, it reminds me of the illustrator behind Madeline. It’s very fantastical and whimsical, with some debauchery snuck in there.
I love people that do work in art objects, things that you can buy, put on a shelf and interact with—they’re not flat or meant to be on a wall. I just started following Bernie Kaminski, this guy who makes really cool paper mâché objects. He’ll create a whole junk drawer out of individual objects made from paper mâché that are just so much better than the real thing.
Natalia Criado is another artist I like—she’s somewhere between a sculptor and a product designer. She makes this teapot with two bodies and the spouts are connected; I'm really interested in things that are objects of beauty, but don’t necessarily have a function.
Shaskia Cuaspa, Caroline Beauzon, and Danielle McKinney are three I’ve had my eye on lately, too. Really, the list is so long.
Another thing I love in your newsletter is your creative exercises. I’m trying to be more intentional with creativity and they inspire me. Do you have one in particular that's your favorite?
A lot of people do these little exercises naturally, but they don't necessarily break them down into step-by-step processes. I decided to try and pay attention to them because it's impossible to stay inspired all the time and build space for it unless you are ultra-intentional about it. I can get bogged down by work and I forget to fuel my creativity with things that are enjoyable outside of the projects that I’m doing for work.
The museum exercise I do has really helped me interact with artwork that isn't necessarily my style. I go to the Getty Museum here in LA and there are rooms and rooms of portraits that can be a bit boring. I used to zoom through them to get to the “interesting things”, so I started doing this exercise as a way to get myself to actually pay attention.
The more I do exercises like that, the more I notice things in regular life that I wouldn't otherwise. When I'm out of practice, or really stressed out and not able to find time or space to get inspired, I'm in my head and I'm not looking at what’s around me.
I pick a theme—it could be shoes, hands, birds, anything I can think of—then I scavenger hunt for those things within the artworks. Sometimes I document it, sometimes I don't and maybe I'll derive meaning from it, maybe I won't, but if I'm not doing this process intentionally I might miss seeing something interesting altogether.
For example, one theme I looked for once was bows and every time I saw a bow (there's a ton of them) I'd take a picture and note which painting it came from. Afterwards, it was really fun to see my camera roll filled with all these bows.
The more I do exercises like that, the more I notice things in regular life that I wouldn't otherwise. When I'm out of practice, or really stressed out and not able to find time or space to get inspired, I'm in my head and I'm not looking at what’s around me. It's like physical exercise—you’ve got to keep doing it in order to maintain your health. When you stop, you lose that strength.
There are obviously so many ways to get inspired by what's on the internet and what's on our phones, but if I revert back to only looking at what's online and not what's around me it can be really limiting and also, kind of exhausting.
You’ve talked about how remembering and recalling inspiration is more of a problem than finding it — can you talk about how you remember and recall?
I save things in three places: Instagram, Pinterest, or my camera roll. Say I'm designing my living room and looking for inspiration—not specific furniture, but the feeling I'm after—I'll look in those three places and pull anything that jumps out at me. It could be something literal, like somebody else's house, or something abstract, like a piece of typography that feels tonally in the realm of what I'm after.
After pulling things (it could be 10 or 300), I go through them all and pay attention to any themes that come up. I zoom out a bit and blur my vision to notice what comes up over and over. Colors will jump out, or I might see that I'm really gravitating towards a lot of wood, or something that feels kind of 70s. You start to get a sense of what it is you're attracted to.
I'm definitely organized and methodical, but I prefer to see everything at once when I'm trying to come up with an idea. A seemingly random chair might inspire a logo I’m working on—that's something I can't predict.
Doing that often for clients, personal projects, and just for fun has helped me get well acquainted with everything I’ve saved and where it is. If I'm building a mood board about meringue, for example, I’ll know that I saved a photo of a cake somewhere and I can find it quickly amongst the thousands of things. Again, it's about the practice of repeatedly doing something so it almost becomes second nature.
Some people love ultra-organized systems with keywords and search terms. The art director Elizabeth Goodspeed is someone I look to a lot for inspiration. She has a wealth of knowledge about design history and her personal archive reflects that with a complex system of folders sorted by era, medium, and more. I got a peek at it once during a presentation and I was so impressed, but it's just not how I work.
I'm definitely organized and methodical, but I prefer to see everything at once when I'm trying to come up with an idea. A seemingly random chair might inspire a logo I’m working on—that's something I can't predict. So, I prefer a big, massive folder filled with a bunch of things. Then, I can curate from there and make decisions.
What is the last thing you bought that you feel really good about? How did you find out about it?
Around Christmas I went to the BODE store just to get inspired (I was not shopping) and there was a pair of shoes there I fell in love with. They’re inspired by vintage theater shoes, like a mary-jane, but with t-straps and a black silk bow. They were too expensive so I thought—cool, maybe I'll find you on The RealReal someday.
A couple months later I was back at the BODE store for a talk about interior design hosted by World of Interiors. Afterwards I was feeling so inspired and decided—I’m just gonna buy the shoes! I felt so guilty on my drive home about having made such a quick decision, but now they make me so happy. Yes, it was an expensive purchase and I can’t do it often, but I thought about them for months, they’re so me, and they remind me of this really inspiring talk I went to with one of my best friends. Now the guilt has faded and I feel great about this purchase.
Thank you Ali! Your newsletter consistently inspires me, and I can't wait to adapt some of your creative approaches in my own life (while surrounded by wonderful scents).
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If you have your own scented essentials, I’d love to hear them! Share in a comment below or hit reply to send me a note.
Was so excited to see this feature pop up in my inbox! Ali's Substack is an endless source of inspiration—I'm always discovering new products, brands, and artists through her. (Already bought a J. Hannah nail polish and a Mondo Mondo crystal bracelet from her recs 😊)
Going to have to try that exercise on my next visit to the art museum!
Thank you for having me!!!! I could talk about things that smell good all the live long day. xoxo