Martha Stewart has to go arrange flowers. Coming from anyone else, this might seem like a half-baked excuse to end an interview, but coming from Stewart, it seems as valid as it apparently was: Shortly after we hang up, photos of two sprawling bouquets appear on her Instagram Stories.
I didn’t have to go out of my way to fact-check her: Stewart’s is often the first face I see when I open Instagram, probably because she posts on social media with the fervor of a freshman during rush week. (And her two million followers—myself included—eat up every second of it.) So it’s fitting, then, that Stewart’s latest project—and the reason I’m speaking with her—is a phone case. And not just any phone case: the “Hold the Phone” Case by BIC EZ Reach.
The best way to explain it to Allure readers is to liken it to the Rhode Lip Case, which looks like a standard phone case from the front but has a slot designed specifically to hold one of the brand’s Peptide Lip Tints on the back. Has Stewart used it? “I haven’t, but I love her and I love everything she’s doing,” she says of Rhode’s founder Hailey Bieber.
Instead of a lip gloss, Stewart’s case is made to cradle a BIC EZ Reach Lighter—ideally one of those she’s designed, which come in a wide range of Stewart-approved prints and patterns. Or, you could pop in one created by her friend and collaborator Snoop Dogg. What you light up with it is up to you. “I’m not using my lighters the same way Snoop uses his lighters,” says Stewart.
For her part, she keeps one next to every fireplace and on tables throughout her home so she can easily light candles. “I have gorgeous old brass candlesticks and these big antique cut glass hurricanes with candles in them,” she says. And then she drops a bomb: “I don’t use scented candles in my house.”
I’ve always imagined that the inside of Stewart’s home would perpetually smell like vanilla, so I’m thrown. “I use all beeswax candles,” she offers. “We’re a family of natural scent… of flowers, food, that kind of thing.” So maybe her home does smell like vanilla… but only because she’s forever just taken a pound cake out of the oven.