The ultimate gift guide to end all gift guides
Maybe not for the reasons we hope.
It’s gift guide season, here there and everywhere, including on Substack. I’m not going to tell you what to buy - because what do I know? I just bought a Secret Santa gift for a work trip, then realised that transporting minor explosives through international skies in my carry-on might pose some problems. Back to the drawing board I go.
Although I must share: the most glamorous gift I ever witnessed was when, as a child, someone turned up to the family’s Christmas party with a present for my mother, hosting: a stack of glossy magazines, topped by Vogue, tied up in a big pink bow. Nothing will ever peak that 11-year-old thrill - those were the days I’d spend hours reading the German au pair’s Cosmos that she’d left behind in my wardrobe, until I got busted by my dad and all that excitement was confiscated. Thank you for your service Claudia, who also told me the facts of life in the most deadpan way you can imagine, crunching her way through her beloved Ryvita.
So instead, I turn to recommendations from those who, well, if not recognised by all as the arbiters of taste, are at least the most recognisable. Yes, celebs at their ilk, and their most deranged entertaining gifting tips yet.
I’ll admit - I started it off trying to find the most ridiculous advice, and it all seemed - quite sound? You be the judge.
Gwyneth Paltrow’s pyjamas
Remember when Gwyneth Paltrow told everyone in 2017 to buy her Yoni eggs and put them where the sun don’t shine? (Well, maybe not there.) The Yoni egg is still available for $66 on final sale - with no returns. Obviously. But it could look very nice on the mantle piece. Thoughtful and stylish. But perhaps not very festive (glitter seems unwise) - and indeed, it wasn’t part of her gift guide. Instead, for inspo, I’d turn to something like these red and white striped pyjamas from this year’s guide which are actually … really lovely.
Happily the Yoni egg was only one of many memorable moments from the A-lister-turned-entrepreneur. Since then we’ve had that iconic “I wish you well” courtroom confrontation from Gwyneth, among much more. Truly, I love her in her power mogul phase. Did you know Goop sprang out of the little newsletter that she started from when she was living in London in a vast white mansion around the corner from me (not in a vast white mansion - but I used to run past it to try to spot her and Chris)? And ahead of the times, even then.
Nicky Haslam’s tea towel
I have a signed Nicky Haslam tea towel from the days before they were sold in Selfridges for a cool £50 a pop. These days, the annual release of the latest edition is now a festive tradition in itself - and a very nice present indeed, if the recipient will see the funny side and not be mortally wounded to find WhatsApp or food festivals on the interior designer’s no-go list of things deemed “common”.
As he has clarified, Common doesn’t mean bad taste, just that something has become a bit of a cliché, like adults having advent calendars, or Prosecco. Hmmm. But it’s hilarious, and anyway he’s quite egalitarian in his targets, once declaring: Holding a shoot on Christmas Day is common. Shooting is pretty common anyway. I loved shooting when I tried it (clay, nothing died) so perhaps he’s right. Pop pop.
So of course I had to see what Nicky Haslam recommends when in a gifting pickle and, thankfully, he has done a Christmas gift guide, for Daylesford Organic naturally (when I was last there, there was a wild rumour that David Beckham was somewhere in the Cotswolds spa-farm shop-complex, shopping for cabbages in plant pots just like the rest of us. Unsubstantiated but it felt all too likely.) Although Nicky doesn’t like the word “gifting” - it’s present giving.
Still, it didn’t quite whet my appetite - napkins, and it must be eight of them? I only have one chair right now - until I hit on this nugget in a newspaper interview as to his fail-safe: ‘I give small antique objects, something like that. I don’t go and buy a hot water bottle, come on. Wrapping? ‘Glossy pink paper with a big red bow.’
So find anything old lying about the place, wrap it nicely, and you’re sorted. I suppose Nicky can’t give people his latest tea towel - common? I would love it though.
Tom Cruise’s coconut cake
Have you heard about this? It sounds delicious. I am very jealous of the journalist explaining the phenomenon - Tom Cruise sends a battalion of these delicious-sounding cakes out to his nearest and dearest and many more it seems - who then became the recipient of not one but two cakes from Santa Cruise. Poor Brooke Shields, who got kicked off the cake list.
Yes, never mind who’s naughty and who’s nice, this is the list that matters, and People did some sterling sleuthing in tracking who’s on there. Meanwhile, you can buy it yourself for $100-plus dollars, plus shipping … to arrive post Christmas, unless you’ve a PJ to fly ‘em round the world, too.
Anna Wintour’s Christmas champagne
In The Devil Wears Prada novel, the character closely based on the legendary editor of American Vogue - or should I say, now Chief Content Officer of Condé Nast and Global Editorial Director of Vogue - has her staff busy for days wrapping bottles of champagne in thick white paper to send out to her contacts. So you might read Condé for Elias and Bergdorf Goodman for Sherry Lehman, as this (fictional, cough) employee - written by AW’s former assistant IRL - explains:
Every year, it’s the same deal. Top-tier people get bottles of Dom. This would include Elias execs, and the big designers who aren’t also personal friends. Her lawyer and accountant. Midlevel people get Veuve, and this is just about everyone—the twins’ teachers, the hair stylists, Uri, et cetera. The nobodies get a bottle of the Ruffino Chianti—usually they go to the PR people who send small, general gifts that aren’t personalized for her. She’ll have us send Chianti to the vet, some of the babysitters who fill in for Cara, the people who wait on her in stores she goes to often, and all the caretakers associated with the summer house in Connecticut. Anyway, I order about twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth of this stuff at the beginning of November, SherryLehman delivers it, and it usually takes nearly a month to do all the wrapping. It’s good she’s out of the office now or we’d be taking this stuff home with us to wrap. Pretty good deal, because Elias picks up the tab.
If it’s good enough for Noughties Nasties, albeit - and allegedly - fictional, it’s good enough for me. (Are we sensing a theme here? A bit like baby birds imprinting on the nearest household appliance they hatched by, I can’t help it if what I find glamorous is defined by the media I consumed in my preteen years.)
Surprisingly, ruffino chianti seems affordable but fairly hard to track down. Let them drink champagne instead. Fail safe-ish (for drinkers).
The Queen’s animatronic fish (updated)
What do you buy the person who’s got everything? Take a tip from The Queen (and no shade to the current, but I mean Her Maj QE2): a singing fish.
Yes, apparently The Queen had a Big Mouth Billy Bass, flapping and crooning on the walls of Balmoral. Where it came from, no one knows, but it had a prime position above the piano. Billy came out in 2000 - so now, a classic? Maybe. I’ll be updating the idea by buying this flying balloon shark for my nephew and nieces. I’ve already gifted a dinosaur and a Star Wars robot - who knows which, never watched it - and children love something inflatable, even if it won’t last forever.
As do adults. Once, PRs sent one of these sharks to the paper I worked at and there was a happy hour as it swam around the newsroom above our heads - a bit like when a rogue dog gets into the school playground, and causes joyous uproar.
Conclusion.
Yes, that’s it: PJs, comedy tea towels, cake, booze and animatronic fish. Stars - they truly are just like us.
Oh, alright, and sex toys.
What’s on your Christmas list this year? I’m on a mission to find out who’s got me in the family Secret Santa after I vetoed my planned gift last year. Sorry but not really.
Love this Emma! I hadn’t heard of Tom Cruise’s coconut cakes - how unique! And how I wish AW’s champagne gifting system was definitely real. Great idea for a post. Thank you!