In the three short years since the brand’s inception, Flamingo Estate has released over 16 collaborations with artists, celebrities, athletes, humanitarians, authors, designers, and even His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. Not only is that number staggering for a small, independent farm and wellness brand, but each collaboration is also wholly one of a kind and singular in its concept and originality. “The collabs are really unexpected, which is perhaps the core of them,” says Flamingo Estate founder Richard Christiansen. “They’re unusual, but they also make perfect sense.”
Known for ethically sourced and handmade apothecary items (including soaps, candles, and snacks), the brand has quickly dominated shelves in trendy shops and home bathrooms. But it’s the collaborations that have cemented the Flamingo Estate team as iconoclast heroes. “Richard has very thoughtfully built a beautiful brand with a breadth of incredible products that speak to every aspect of our consumer’s lifestyle,” says Heather Kaminetsky, president of North America for online luxury retailer Mytheresa.
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Few brands have embedded themselves into the culture like Flamingo Estate has, and on such a tight timeline, too. Like many great ideas, Flamingo Estate got its start as a solution to a pressing problem. At the very start of the COVID-19 pandemic, a Los Angeles farmer friend of Christiansen’s was struggling to sell fresh produce due to restaurant closures. Within days, Christiansen and his associates had set up a CSA to help distribute the vegetables. “Then quickly one farm became 10 and then 50 and then 100-plus,” he says. The current network is 110 farmers, and what used to be pickup from a parking lot has now blossomed into a seamless weekly delivery service, with more than 75,000 regenerative farm boxes sold. Christiansen describes the boxes as a collaboration with Mother Nature herself. “It sounds cheesy, but that really is the truth,” he says.
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Perhaps what made Flamingo Estate’s CSA box stand out is Christiansen’s background in luxury marketing and his ability to present the produce in all its glory. “I thought, We need to treat this like a luxury brand. Mother Nature is the greatest luxury house, and we are selling her goods,” he says. “At its core, we try to bring the design acumen and style and thoughtfulness to the garden—which is something that hasn’t really happened before.”
Christiansen’s life looked very different a handful of years ago. He ran his own creative agency, the renowned Chandelier Creative in New York, working alongside the world’s most iconic brands, photographers, and creatives. The shift from luxury fashion to honeybees and garden tools may sound severe, but it’s intentional. “This is a chance for me to pay for my sins in some way,” says Christiansen. “I spent a long time selling people stuff they don’t need, and I have the chance now to do something meaningful.” Cue the long list of collabs, all of which go to the charity of the collaborator’s choice, he says. “We make no money on any of our collaborations—without exception, all the money goes to charity. That’s not just proceeds, but the full price of the product. They’re the primary way that we’re able to give back.”
While Mother Nature may have metaphorically been Flamingo Estate’s first partner, Chrissy Teigen is officially recognized as the brand’s initial celebrity collaborator. In winter 2020, Teigen—a friend of Christensen’s—created a set of jams. The idea sprang to life after the friends’ long discussions about their mutual love of food. After many variations, they landed on three bold and unique flavors, with 100 percent of the purchase price going to Baby2Baby, an organization providing essential goods to children in need.
Spring 2021 saw the launch of Flamingo Estate’s maybe most unique collab to date: 25 limited-edition ice buckets by prolific Italian architect and designer Gaetano Pesce. Each bucket was a treasured objet d’art, with its own unique colors and designs inspired by the estate’s garden. The concept was born from a desire to pair ice buckets with the estate’s Pink Moon rosé, but truly came to life when Pesce came on board. Together, he and Flamingo Estate crafted colorful, hand-poured poly-resin buckets with a charming ice cube texture that nods to the vessel’s inherent functionality. “It was totally nonsensical that we would have Gaetano Pesce do something like that, but that’s what made it so wonderful,” says Christiansen. The project is one of Christiansen’s favorite collabs to date, not only because of the originality, but also because of Pesce himself: “I have a very, very, very soft spot for it because he’s obviously a hero of mine and those buckets are beautiful.”
Night Blooming Jasmine & Big Sur Sea Salt Body Scrub
Night Blooming Jasmine & Big Sur Sea Salt Body Scrub
After Pesce’s ingenuity came designer Kelly Wearstler and her 2021 whimsical interpretation of a holiday gingerbread house, inspired by midcentury modern architecture. “Wild enough to make Willy Wonka blush,” read the press release. The Gingerbread Dreamhouse collab was “brought exquisitely to life by pastry chef Mark Tasker from Balthazar in New York” and featured “an aesthetic inspired by Rudolph Schindler and Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic architecture decorated with geometric repetitions and bold checkerboard patterning,” Wearstler tells Bazaar.
“I am so proud of the final product derived from the special collaboration and the inspiring mission it supported,” she says. “In the end, we made 100 Gingerbread Dreamhouses total, with all proceeds dedicated to Create Structure, a nonprofit that aids communities in the rebuild process following natural disasters.”
Christiansen himself is the first to admit that these team-ups just “don’t really make sense. It doesn’t make sense that Kelly would design a gingerbread house.” In the holiday season of 2022, Teigen designed the second annual gingerbread house, complete with a treehouse and vegetable garden in lush, playful detail.
The collaborations are so representative of each collaborator, yet perfectly match the Flamingo Estate brand ethos—an impossible task made possible through the lack of interference. “Perhaps one of the most interesting and impressive things about this is that we have been able to have direct conversations with people,” says Christiansen. “It hasn’t gotten stuck in layers of agents or managers or teams, which sometimes these types of collabs tend to do. I think that’s because we were very transparent about doing something quite earnest and genuine in terms of promoting the garden and nature, which is a shared value.”
Given the brand’s origins, it makes sense a majority of these collaborations have been food-related. Take the partnership with artist and cook April Valencia and her brand Masa Memory for holiday vegan tamales in 2021. Or the spring 2022 collab with chef Fiona Afshar and her Pasta by Fiona sourdough pasta, with each boldly colored hue coming from a plant source (orange: harissa; blue: butterfly pea flowers; yellow: turmeric). Last fall, the brand even partnered with salad giant Sweetgreen for a limited-edition ode to tomatoes. The Dirt and Tomato candle was inspired by ripe heirloom tomatoes with earthy notes of wet soil.
At the end of 2022, Flamingo Estate worked with entrepreneur and environmental advocate Stephanie Shepherd on the “vertiginous” Spiraling candle. The candle’s notes are addictive and intentional: “The scent is exactly what I dreamed of and fills the rooms of my home with notes of freshly cut flowers, green leaves, and a hint of woodsy musk,” says Shepherd. All proceeds will go to Shepherd’s charity of choice, the People Concern—a nonprofit aimed at ending homelessness in Los Angeles.
Sesame Street Crewneck
Last year also saw Flamingo Estate’s dirtiest collab—literally. Sesame Street—or more specifically Oscar the Grouch—collaborated with the estate on a trash-themed collection. “For a collaboration based around recycling and responsible environmental care, who knows more about soil health and recycling than someone who lives in a trash can?” asks Christiansen. The collection includes images and phrases of the perennially grumpy Oscar on crewnecks, T-shirts, tote bags, and hats (all made from 100 percent waste cotton by fair-wage workforces). One sweatshirt declares: “Have a Rotten Day!” with Oscar gleefully smiling and holding a handful of trash.
Even His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama has partnered with Flamingo Estate. In winter 2022, the Ascension Set sold out quickly. The collection, which made a perfect holiday gift, included four artisanal soaps, a jar of saffron honey, and a scented candle. The materials were sourced in California but inspired by ingredients found high in the Himalayas, including rhododendron, marigold, turmeric, and sea buckthorn. The proceeds went to the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader’s Gaden Phodrang Foundation, which promotes peace, humanitarianism, and the protection of the environment.
The brand also partnered with Campbell-Rey (made up of designer Duncan Campbell and his creative partner Charlotte Rey) on a limited-edition set of bronze garden tools, handmade in England with old-school techniques. It created hand-carved ceramic menorahs with ceramicist Zack Nathanson. And if that weren’t enough, Flamingo Estate also managed to collab with the Elder Statesman on perhaps the most luxurious, decadent, and fashionable cashmere blanket in history.
But perhaps the brand’s pièce de résistance of collaborations (as yet, anyway) is its private harvest program. In winter of early 2022, Flamingo Estate teamed up with Julianne Moore, Savannah and LeBron James, Tiffany Haddish, Will Ferrell, Ai Weiwei—and honeybees. The following summer, the estate’s beehives took a glamorous vacation of sorts, as they were delicately transferred to the gardens of this select group of visionaries. From Moore’s property in Montauk, New York, to Weiwei’s garden in Montemor-o-Novo, Portugal, the collection allowed for cross-pollination not just of plants and flowers, but ideas and people, too. Each limited-edition honey took on its own notes and color. “Just like fine wine, honey tastes different from garden to garden, depending on the health of the soil and the types of botanicals the bees forage,” read the press release. Additionally, each celebrity was able to select their charity of choice, with the standard 100 percent of proceeds going directly to each organization.
Julianne Moore Honey
Moore chose to support Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund, a 501(c)(4) organization that works to support gun safety. For Haddish, the collaboration allowed her to reconnect with her childhood love of gardening and meld it with her passion for giving back, through her nonprofit, SheReady. The mission of the organization is to inspire, protect, and provide resources to youth impacted by foster care. Revolutionary artist, documentarian, and activist Weiwei’s bees foraged on wildflowers all summer long on the Iberian peninsula. “On my land, flowers bloom like a piece of brocade,” Weiwei said in a press release. “Every year is different.” His honey, with notes of lavender and olives, benefited Refugees International.
The honey collaboration was such a success, Christiansen says, it will be an annual event going forward, with a rotating cast of bee hosts. While he’s quick to not play favorites off of Flamingo’s long list of collabs, the honey collection is a standout. “I was very proud of that because of the complexity of it,” he says. “Getting bees to Portugal for Ai Weiwei … It was a very simple idea, but the impact was large.”
When asked about future dream collaborators, Christiansen says the sky is the limit, but he particularly enjoys working with a certain type of collaborator. “My goal has been to collaborate and create with anyone with green thumbs and middle fingers,” he says. Among his favorite such types are activists and thought leaders like Michael Pollan, Alice Waters, and Jane Goodall. Other dream collaborators include British artist David Hockney (currently at the top of Christiansen’s list: “His sensibility about color is something that I deeply love”), Tom Ford, Dolly Parton, and Miss Piggy.
If you want to experience a Flamingo Estate collab in person and happen to be in East Hampton this summer, stop by the brand’s immersive shopping experience with Mytheresa. For five weeks, Flamingo is showcasing “The Inconvenience Store”—a reimagined auto body shop with a modern twist. You can find decadent Flamingo Estate snacks in the “gas station snack section,” Mytheresa-curated racks of clothing hanging on car lifts, and Flamingo body care items if your shower needs a tune-up. The pop-up collab is at 9 Railroad Avenue in East Hampton through July 30, open 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Thursday through Sunday.
Freelance Editor
Kristin Limoges is a freelance editor, covering all things beauty, wellness, and travel. She was previously the wellness editor at Domino Magazine. Kristin can usually be found face, hair, and body masking simultaneously, while thinking-up clever DIYs for her small-space Chinatown apartment.
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