About a quarter block down, you can smell it. Damask rose, peppermint, and rosemary—the scent wafts along Figueroa, the busy Highland Park street where Flamingo Estate’s holiday pop-up is perched in Northeast Los Angeles.
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Bushels to Beauty, and Back Again
Long before it launched an experiential arm, Flamingo Estate was a farm box company founded by Richard Christiansen, formerly of Chandelier Creative, a legendary New York-based creative agency with a roster including Hermès, Cartier, and, more recently, Rhode. While that last client was post-Christiansen’s departure, his background as a creative director is as crucial as his upbringing on a rural Australian farm; who else could turn humble produce shipments into lusted-after luxury deliveries? I relocated from New York City to my hometown of Los Angeles during the pandemic, and without entirely joking, I would tell people I moved because the hustle was a lot—that, and the lack of good citrus. A real homecoming was had, then, when I returned in 2021 and immediately signed up for the locally famous farm boxes.
A few years later, Flamingo Estate has emerged as a globally recognized lifestyle brand that doesn’t just curate high-quality produce and pantry essentials, but has also launched bath and body products, candles, books, and, oh, just a few cultural moments. The Heirloom Tomato Candle arguably sparked the entire tomato girl movement of painting our fragrance wardrobes a bright, juicy red. (As Christiansen notes, “It has always been our number-one selling product, and much copied by other brands (but never perfected),” a potential Loewe dig that adds to lore). Then there are the various celebrity collaborations, my favorite of which has to be the limited-run Pamela’s Pickles, inspired by a recipe handed down to Pamela Anderson by her great aunt.
As a beauty editor, I’ve found the most fascinating growth to be in Flamingo Estate’s beauty assortment. Take the Manuka Rich Cream—which felt entirely organic to the brand, considering Christiansen’s parents are beekeepers. And just this year, the Exfoliating Peppermint Soap Brick earned an Allure Best of Beauty Award in the body category. I tested the latter for our awards, and there’s always something exciting about seeing a red-seal product in the wild, watching customers discover its magic, too.
The Holiday Harvest Shop
The corner store shares a wall with the company’s LA headquarters and workshop. When I arrived at the mossy green building, I almost walked in through the back door where its soap bars are produced (one hundred at a time). I didn’t miss out on any sort of sensorial or tactile experience, though—the smelling, the touching, the feeling, the tasting! I got it all when I swung around to the front entrance.
The first thing that hits you is the sight of rosemary and sage bunches hanging from the ceiling. Peeking out from above them is a hand-painted mural of pink flowers, a gentle juxtaposition to the green-drenched interior. The space itself is a small footprint, and although it’s filled with candles, soap bricks, and jars of honey everywhere you look, it doesn’t feel crowded. There’s one worker set behind a wooden apothecary-like counter, and Flamingo Estate’s office manager, Alex, who is on olive oil-tasting duty in one corner of the store. Above them, dried peppers serve as an edible crown molding.
Each wall is flanked by a checkerboard of products and the brand’s holiday gift boxes—each with a cross-stitch design that feels all at once new and nostalgic. The beauty products are on one side; the pantry essentials are on the other, and the center counter is home to a show-stopping floral arrangement. True to the brand’s ethos of respecting the lifecycles of the natural world, the centerpiece isn’t replaced with a new bouquet each week; instead, stems are swapped out organically until it’s transformed into a new arrangement entirely.
