Gift-a-palooza Continued
And 5 things to read/watch this week
Very Specific Gifts, for Very Specific People
I have heard your requests! And I love them—and you for asking. Thank you to the indefatigable Lauren Sherman and her newsletter, Line Sheet (required reading for the fashion industry, but you don’t need me to tell you that), for the shout out, too. I remain deeply desirous of that beautiful bathroom trash can, thanks for asking, though I have learned that in order to make my own I don’t need to learn how to weld, I need to learn how to solder. Different! As with any endeavor requiring potentially dangerous equipment, I appreciate the clarification!
In other news, it’s been brought to my attention that we may be at peak “bow.” Almost every single event I’ve been to in the past two weeks has incorporated ribbons somewhere in the decor, typically daintily tied around the stem of a champagne coupe or candelabra, sometimes hanging from a chandelier. There were even bow-shaped butter pats and lovingly trussed-up baguettes gussied up as gifts at one cocktail party I went to last week. (Pyramids, whether made of champagne coupes or butter, gougères, etc. are also definitely happening.) Good news is it seems that we all still find big ol’ bows sweet as hell but probably won’t in a few weeks, so I think we should all be getting our ya yas out, under the tree and around it. Let’s go for it. Bows on everything. Including you. Why not!
On to the gifts!
You need a small, non-obvious thing for an aspiring aesthete who loves to entertain? Get them these beautiful teak salad servers. Everyone always needs them, and wants nicer ones than the ones they have, and these ones with their wiggly handles are unassumingly excellent. You can also throw in this delightful etched bowl, which really invites happy handling and a very assured hostess vibe. Wrap up a copy of Nora Ephron’s Heartburn with the now infamous vinaigrette recipe page dog-eared, for a whole delightful thing.
You are looking for something small but thoughtful, and you say there is a Teutonic vibe afoot? I am utterly tickled by this petrified-looking rabbit candle from Aerin, and I think they will be too. (Plus, the fragrance is “Salzburg pine,” and once it’s done they can clean it out and use it for pens or pins or cotton balls or gluhwein or buckshot or as a pot for an air plant, or whatever their particular fancy.)
She wants a sweater that will make her feel like Natassja Kinski in Paris, Texas? Who doesn't! Say no more. I wear it with these light wool trousers (recommend going up a size) and feel very French and subtly pulled together. A+
Actually, she wants a sweater that will make her feel like she’s the star of a Nancy Meyers movie. This one, hand-picked by my former Departures (R.I.P) colleague Melissa Ventosa-Martin’s extremely chic and special store Old Stone Trade is seasonless and snuggly perfection. It’s also hand-knitted over 120 hours by a community women in Inis Mór, the largest of the Aran Islands. Imagine it over your bikini on the beach around a bonfire in Malibu, or with jeans at the farmer’s market in Fort Greene in the spring, or popped on over whatever they’re wearing immediately after they receive it from you at Christmas. Melissa knows quality, and she really cares about craftsmanship. This was a little annoying when she wanted me to commission stories about craft all the time and I wanted to write about far-flung spas and dogs wearing Hermès. Now firmly situated in the age of landfill-drowning disposable crap clothes, I can see how ahead of the curve she really was. OST traffics in true investment pieces, the kind of lifetime-wear garb that you’ll pass down to your kids and they’ll be shocked by how well the quality has stood up: I send everyone looking for something truly special her way. (FWIW, She also has a pretty incredible evening capsule with ONE OF on-site right now, if you want to start 2024 with a bespoke bang. That opera coat! That LBD!) But back to the knit that’ll become your new-best-friend: it has shades of those Babaa sweaters people are crazy about but everyone you know doesn’t already have it. Dreamy.
They’re fun and you’re low on funds and fun ideas. Get them a fun bathrobe! This is a fun bathrobe.
They air-dry. But what do they drink out of? How about these chic coupes from Coming Soon?
They talk about how sad it is that print is dying, like, a lot. Show them the light at the end of the tunnel with an independent magazine subscription grab-bag via Stack, which will send a different glorious indie their way every month, starting in Jan.
Caviar, though fabulous (and thanks to Chinese sturgeon, arguably more accessibly priced than ever), is difficult to properly gift. Unless you’re handing over a cute little Yeti cooler or one of those plastic ones like you’re ferrying an organ donation, and even then, it’s kind of a toss up depending on how much ice you’ve got. And look, the thought is what counts until you hand over an expired present. Give them this deeply cute and delicious chocolate very real looking “Caviar” tin instead, along with a set of little mother of Pearl spoons for next time, when you’ll make a plan to share the real thing. (Just please, when you do, no “caviar bumps.” That is dork behavior.)
She spends most of her summer on the Med. Or at least she would like people to think that. (Who among us!) Olympia Le-Tan’s book clutches are always a good idea for the whimsical gal with more style than stuff to stash (though, it’s worth noting, they do fit the essentials). The IBIZA edition is especially fab. And when she gets bored at dinner she can stare at it longingly. Or if the person next to her is droning on and on about their summer plans she can “accidentally” whack them with it. Win/win!
More sparkles, please? Everyone loved Dorsey in the last newsletter, and this style and length (16”) of rivière is always sold out and works beautifully with everything in your closet. So I’d act fast.
They have everything. Really. But they love presents. And you are happy to indulge. Do they have a sterling silver ketchup sleeve and lid? I bet they don’t! And I would bet you anything that they use ketchup. You could also go the Colman’s lid route and be sure to include in your note that they “really cut the mustard.”
We’re beyond Heinz, and that’s beyond your budget. Fun and funky condiments are always a good gift, and they show that you see and respect their experienced palate and pantry situation. Wildcard spices and sauces are a true treat, i.e. a great gift, because you always want to try them and not have to buy them for yourself. Also you can wrap jars up individually, or jam them all in a pretty box or basket and tie a bow on that. Onino chili crisp, Sambal Evie, CAP x Botanica’s Magic Spice, Fly By Jing's MALA Spice, Secret Aardvark’s Drunken Garlic Black Bean Sauce, Rhea’s preserved lemon crush. The good flaky salt. Go wild.
New work buddy is a new (or recently departed) New Yorker? These ornaments are too cute.
You want to spend like, 50$, and they have a sweet tooth? These Casas Bosques chocolate topped butter biscuits are like the dream version of those Petit Ecoliers, and are just special enough to be a real gift, rather than a grocery store moment.
She enjoys a hint of an equestrian vibe, but with a bit of a lift (via a walkable, chunky heel that looks great with jeans) for under $300? Okay, you’re actually talking about you? Right this way!
She’s more of a fancy flat girl. Four words for you: Mesh Mary-Jane Ballerinas. OK, three more: Le Monde Beryl. Ta-da. (Also partial to the double-buckle style, but we all know I’m a sucker for a hint of cowboy.)
Comme Si socks and chocolate sardines. Real best friend shit. Don’t ask why it works. Just know that it does.
5 Things to Read / Watch/ Listen to:
1.) Is While You Were Sleeping a Christmas movie? I always thought so (Chicago winter! Lots of scarves and big Sandra Bullock sweater energy!) but the premise is so cringe-inducing I also never watch it at this or any time of year. (Certain types of cringe are, for me, borderline intolerable. It’s why I avoided Nathan Fielder for so long, though I have since The Rehearsal come around. The Curse, currently, is still bewildering.) A recent Sentimental Garbage episode has me rethinking that stance, as does this delightful oral history from 2020, when the film turned 25(!). Perhaps it is not cringe-inducing! Perhaps it is excellent and should be added to the holiday movie rotation STAT?
2.) This piece from the November issue of Esquire about miniatures, and the fascinating people who make them:
Miniatures draw us in in a way no other artistic expression does. Think of Alice, kneeling in that long hallway in Wonderland, peering through the tiny door into the miniature garden: “How she longed to get out of that dark hall, and wander about among those beds of bright flowers.” I felt that longing. We all feel it.
Here’s a video by one of the people featured heavily in the story, Robert Off. (Fun fact: he is married to my mother’s cousin!) I love these boxes, these very adult (and exquisite) diorama projects. There’s something about a small perfectable world that’s deeply soothing in our huge, forever uncontrollable one.
3.) This barn-burner of an essay: “Christmas on the Moon” by Harrison Scott Key (Longreads)
I hadn’t been to church in years but still read my Bible often, with all those horrid battles and beasts and skin diseases that reminded me so much of my Mississippi childhood. The elusiveness of home is one of the Bible’s great themes. God himself was mostly homeless. “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests,” he says, “but the Son of Man hath nowhere to lay his head,” Jesus says, a little passive-aggressively.
God doesn’t seem to care too much about where you’re from, and when you’re from a place, he likes making you go somewhere else, usually worse. The whole book is a fever dream of exile and real estate development, beginning in a garden and ending 1,200 chapters later in something even better than New York in autumn, a hermit’s grand hallucination of a city almost impossible in its beauty and cleanliness and tax revenue.
… Isolation works a number on you. I almost wanted criminals to stop by. In the long stretch of dark between sundown and the arrival of my brother, I took to dragging a chair out in the middle of the lot, beyond the glow of the tent, under the great black ceiling of stars, staring up into the cold. I felt like Abraham when God told him to leave home and go find another one and that his family would grow as many as the stars above. I felt like Jacob, his grandson, who sleeps on the ground at night and demands a blessing and God puts him in a scissor hold and gives him a hip injury that lasts all his days. It always seemed odd to me that God would appear to Jacob and all Jacob wanted to do was wrestle. But after a week out on the moonscape, I understood. If God had shown up, I’d have wanted to wrestle, too.
4.) Joan Juliet Buck on Princess Diana and The Crown. I love this kind of thing: just dishy enough. Also, Elizabeth Debicki is really amazing on this show. She has the Di head tilt nailed, and you don’t even mind that she’s like, two feet taller than everyone else.
5.) American Symphony (Netflix). Poignant, beautiful, intimate, ruminative; about art, and love, and life, as seen through Jon Batiste and his wife Suleika Jaouad during what should be the best year of his life and was instead probably the most whiplash-enducing. It will definitely be nominated for the Oscar for best documentary, so you might as well get on the boat now so you can talk really authoritatively about it at all your holiday gatherings before the hoi polloi catch on.
That’s all for this week! Thanks, as always, for being here. Hopefully you get all of your holiday orders in on time for swift delivery (seems like tomorrow/Saturday is the cut-off for most). When all else fails, shop in person. When even that fails, make them something! Date bark or a really fancy snack mix (someone please make me this!) or Food52’s famous (and shockingly easy) olive oil cake, or a love note or a drawing on a napkin. Just, you know, tie a bow around it so they know you care.