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Q&a / Amen Candles’ founder on building a plastic-free future with mycelium packaging, and Picasso collaborations – from literally growing his brand, to tie-ins with M+ museum and Kapok in Hong Kong

Amen Candles’ Uruguayan founder Rodrigo Garcia Alvarez. Picasso looks ahead. Photo: Succession Picasso 2022
Amen Candles’ Uruguayan founder Rodrigo Garcia Alvarez. Picasso looks ahead. Photo: Succession Picasso 2022

Alvarez is slowly transforming the luxury candle market with eco-friendly innovations and cool collaborations carried by Picasso museums and stores such as Dover Street Market Ginza

“Ninety-nine per cent of my job is discarding projects,” says Rodrigo Garcia Alvarez, the Uruguayan founder of luxury candle brand Amen Candles, with a laugh. Based on his brand’s limited but expertly curated output in the few years since its inception in 2020, that’s not so hard to believe. Largely thanks to Alvarez’s uncompromising dedication to crafting beautiful scented candles as easy on the eye as they are on the environment – Amen is known for its commitment to using mycelium packaging, made from mushrooms – the brand has now taken off globally, with its distinct vision of candles as an art form resonating with consumers worldwide.
Rodrigo Garcia Alvarez is trying to redefine sustainability in design. Photo: Succession Picasso 2022
Rodrigo Garcia Alvarez is trying to redefine sustainability in design. Photo: Succession Picasso 2022

“The idea is to share that the only way to live without plastics is very simple – by not using them,” Alvarez continues. “Recycling plastics is not a solution, just a huge lie, and only five per cent of plastics are actually recycled. Every time you’re seeing somebody talking about recycling plastics is pure brainwashing. For me, the idea that styrofoam packaging would take 500 years to decompose was unfeasible … 95 per cent of plastics, not recycled, end up in the ocean, the fish, and inside us [humans] as microplastics.”

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Amen Candles’ products are encased in carbon negative mushroom packaging. Photo: Amen Candles
Amen Candles’ products are encased in carbon negative mushroom packaging. Photo: Amen Candles

Not only has Amen’s unique packaging introduced a new layer of individuality to the final product – “each mycelium grows different, so each has its own personality”, says Alvarez – the concept also attracted to the brand a new collaborator, none other than late Spanish painter Pablo Picasso’s granddaughter, Diana. “We did this installation [at Dover Street Market]. When Diana came, she said, ‘Even though plastic was a trend in the art world, Picasso never used plastics.’ One month after she casually called and said, ‘I want to buy [Amen] for my collectors and galleries.’

“My brand was one month old,” Alvarez concludes, reminiscing about the launch of the Amen Picasso collection not long after. “I was not thinking a collaboration with Picasso was possible.”

Rodrigo Garcia Alvarez and Diana Picasso at the Antibes Picasso Museum. Photo: Succession Picasso 2022
Rodrigo Garcia Alvarez and Diana Picasso at the Antibes Picasso Museum. Photo: Succession Picasso 2022
Fast forward to 2025 and Amen is now preparing to launch in Hong Kong via retail boutique Kapok and museum M+, in conjunction with the Picasso for Asia: A Conversation exhibition opening to the public on March 15. We caught up with Alvarez to learn more about the founder’s dreams for the future of his brand and for a plastic-free society – as well as that quirky affinity for mushrooms as eco-friendly wrapping.

Coming from Latin America, how does it feel to continue building on Picasso’s legacy and bringing that to life, furthering this dialogue between Latin America and Asia?

Rodrigo Garcia Alvarez works with Pablo Picasso’s granddaughter Diana. Photo: Succession Picasso 2022
Rodrigo Garcia Alvarez works with Pablo Picasso’s granddaughter Diana. Photo: Succession Picasso 2022

One thing I always find connects Asia and Latin America is a tremendous respect for nature and the style of design. A language of design, a way of design, an approach to design. When you look at works from architects or designers from Latin America and Asia, there is a harmonious respect of nature and a purist, natural style of design, instead of very brand and logo-focused. That would be the first impression, in general, that I have.