GIFT BONANZA 2025
A little bit gift guide, a lot of wrapping, and tips from design-y friends
Hi and welcome! A note of introduction for any new readers who may have arrived here via a really lovely Cup of Jo feature a few weeks ago. I’m a longtime writer and editor on design and architecture, known for having feelings about buildings. My job used to be visiting people’s amazing homes all over the world, and I am still interiors-obsessed. I live in California with my husband and two small daughters, and we built a sauna from the ground up in our Berkeley backyard this summer. There’s a lot to mine in the Ground Condition archives, so have at it!
Good things come in any packages
The truth is, I don’t know what you should get your 14-year-old second cousin or frenemy co-worker for the holidays. Maybe… nothing? But for the people you genuinely love, nothing expresses devotion like spending time on the presentation of a token of affection. I love wrapping, truly, and end up spending a not-small amount of energy each year designing a theme for all the gifts I’m packaging up. A couple of years ago, I gave some tips on this very topic to The Strategist. To begin our gifting bonanza, I’m adding a few more here—plus, even more insight from a few chic sources: Jill Singer, Christine Muhlke, Natalie So, Stephanie Madewell, and Hopie Stockman.
Unexpected textures: Wrap a box in bubble wrap instead of paper, fill an empty vessel with sheets of silver mylar, or nestle an iridescent dish sponge inside a box to display a treasure. Last year, I lost my mind and applied—with a tweezer—tiny silver studs in a grid to brown kraft paper packages.
Spell it out: Get some fun markers and make the recipient’s name the focal point—I’m talking huge script or bubble letters that take up the entire face of a package. You can also get crafty with namecards (stitch someone’s name instead of writing it, collage, pen their name on found objects or greenery).
Shop the hardware store: Painter’s tape can be used as tape or to create negative space if you’re doing a DIY pattern, and try bright nylon cord or basic twine as package string. Use metal washers to print patterns or weigh down the ends of cord; use lightweight canvas dropcloths to splatter paint on. Etc.
Scavenger hunt: My mother used to do this for someone in our family every Christmas, and part of the fun was pantomiming how annoying it was. (Of course we loved it.) You start by writing a two-line couplet, or a full limerick, and wrapping that for the person to open. Each mini poem leads you to another hiding place in the house where you have to find another rhyming clue, and so on, until you get to the actual gift—often something too bulky to wrap.
Recycled artwork: If you have kids, you know and fear the endless stack of artwork they bring home from school—and their reactions if they catch you stuffing it into the recycling bin. Put it to good use and use it to wrap the grandparents’ presents. They won’t even care what’s inside the box!
Free your mind: Anything can be wrapping, to the point that paper printed specifically for this purpose seems pretty ludicrous. A quiver of ideas, excerpted from Emilie Hawtin:
”What I really love is the green and butter yellow printed paper Italians use as drawer liner. I get it at the office supply stores in Rome. In New York, I ask the guys selling deli flowers if I can buy their “say it with flowers” paper. You can also use newspaper tied with baking twine, and choose pages/stories that match someones personality. The Financial Times looks visually nicer than the New York Times when wrapped.”
The pros know
“I have two philosophies of gift-wrapping that are kind of the inverse of one another: either I use a utilitarian material that I already own (parchment paper, wax paper, newspaper, the red mesh net bags lychees come in) or I “wrap” the gift in something that will be useful to the gift-receiver (kitchen towel, bandana, tote bag). Typically I will dye these things myself to make them more special, but will also occasionally use something like a dust bag or mesh bag. To spruce up the former, I like using neon washi tape or neon string. (I am partial to Garn & Mehr baker’s twine, which I first discovered at the Berlin art supply store Modulor.)” —Natalie So, writer and person with great style
“Wherever I can, I grab interesting broadsheets and gallery posters. My ex turned me on to the best source: Agnès b. has been publishing artists’ broadsheets, her Point d’Ironie series, since 1997, and piles them right inside the door. My collection includes Jim Jarmusch, Marcel Dzama and more. Bright orange painter’s tape seals the deal. NB: Last weekend, I found John Derian’s very cool wrapping paper and gift tags book. Not a dud in the lot!” —Christine Muhlke, xtine
“Our gifts to each other are wrapped furoshiki-style in cloth, using a selection of vintage scarves and bandanas, scraps of sari silk, and quilting fat-quarters of printed cotton or Liberty lawn, and adorned with a motley assortment of hoarded ribbons and bows. This approach has been transformative for me, because I almost never get around to wrapping anything until Christmas eve, and furoshiki is fast. I never worry about running out of tape, and I can get the last-minute wrapping all done while re-watching “Moonstruck” and drinking milk punch. Particularly bulky or ungainly gifts go into repurposed canvas totes or shiny metallic Baggu bags. And after the great unwrapping, we collect and fold up all the cloth and ribbons to reuse next year, avoiding the dreaded trash bag of unrecyclable papers.”—Stephanie Madewell, even*cleveland
“I will preface this by saying that I think learning how to properly wrap a present is a basic life skill that everyone should learn, in the vein of making hospital corners, boiling an egg, tying a tie, and french braiding. That said, I’m not a huge stickler for wrapping presents. despite being a person who thinks pretty deeply about aesthetics and presentation for a living. I love a gift that comes in its own pouch that can often be repurposed and used as much as the gift itself: Dries Van Noten lipsticks, which arrive in a beautiful floral drawstring bag; pleated baby Baggus, which come inside a tiny matching sack; & Daughter cashmere sweaters, which come wrapped in a striped canvas envelope.” —Jill Singer, Counter Space
“I grew up in a house that saved every scrap of wrapping paper and ribbons. My three sisters and I spent hours (days?) each holiday season wrapping gifts according to my mom’s highly demanding specs. A hand-drawn card, at least two ribbons, a sprig of holly or pine tucked into the bow, and sometimes tree ornaments tied onto the *outside* of the present. Naturally we had to make our own block-printed wrapping paper at Block Shop, but before we made our own, I loved using our leftover wallpaper scraps. One of my favorite practices is cutting up old calendar pages to make cards. (Bonus points if you capture the recipient’s lucky number.) I always keep my old Dolphin Studio calendars for this reason. Then I finish it off with rosemary from the backyard.” —Hopie Stockman, painter and of the three Stockman sisters behind Block Shop Textiles
OK fine, here are a few recs!
My friend Chinzalée Sonami makes gorgeous ceramics under the moniker Pala that sell out an in instant. Miraculously, she still has a few left of these perky little tomato-striped mugs: three in yellow and three in chocolate brown. Weaver Grace Engel is an insanely talented Asheville weaver; she teaches and exhibits at Penland School of Craft, whose shop sells her work. I managed to scoop up two of Grace’s overshot pouches for gifts this year… if I don’t keep them for myself. I take issue with lamps or lighting as “gifts”—way too specific!—but something about this Ford Bostwick-designed art piece/sconce wants to make me live my wildest Oprah moment. I’ve managed to give or get nearly every edition of the Peace Towel by Lena Corwin, and this year’s is no exception PSA: These towels remain just as absorbent, snag-free, and saturated with the color with the day I first encountered them. Terry magic. (Other towels I like—maybe less presumptuous as a pool, beach, or sauna present than a bathroom angle? Nudists on burgundy from Plunge, vintage YSL, red-and-white check, adorably freaky lilac-and-peach with texture, and the same towel—on sale—in a shade of bright green I can’t stop buying. If you, too, want to give green: tiny leather Clare V. pouch (TRR), Marjolein Delhaas 2026 planner (WMS&CO), and wind pants for the leggings graduate (Poshmark). I’m writing this pretty late, so a bunch of ceramist Megan Baker’s best pieces are sold out for the season, but that’s what following people on IG is for! Still in stock: this gobsmacking one of one Rosette Vase. I also managed to snag two of Abby Clawson Low’s HI & LOW calendars for 2026 before they sold out. If you must give wine glasses—or ask for them, I don’t know, sometimes it happens—go chunky. Giving jewelry is strangely intimate and to be avoided in most instances, IMO, but something about the scientific specificity of Lizzie Ames’s seedpod earrings usurps that position.
For cheap and cheerful, it has to be irresistible: I recommend Kiosk’s Rollfix measuring tape, an oversized paperclip in siren red, the platonic ideal of a notebook (handmade in Portugal for over 100 years!), and incense papers that smell like the garden on Aventine Hill in Rome. You can personalize these at no extra cost with a secret message for your recipient/burning flame. Speaking of personalization, I love taking classics—vintage denim jackets, Hunter rain boots—and customizing them with chain-stitching, patches, and drawings for my baby nephew. If anything was primed to go viral this holiday szn, it feels like the Japanese sauna watch. And finally, the ne plus ultra of woven textiles, because this wool cover (“depending on need, could serve a multitude of functions from cloak to tablecloth to curtain”) was made in a run of seven in Andrea Zittel’s A-Z West weaving studio in Joshua Tree.
Gift guide cheat sheet
The best gift guides I’ve read this year—most of which I’ve even bought something from! you’ll have to guess what—were put together by people with highly specific points-of-view. It’s not a matter of “taste.” Taste is boring… It’s passion, it’s borderline demented, it’s commitment to a theme that I’m into. And I will note, if you’re going about it the old-fashioned way (see below), it takes months of legwork—and a full magazine staff to execute. Kaitlin Phillips ran a great interview with the team behind the New York Magazine “Strategist” gift guide, for those who really want to know how the sausage gets made.
A Very Picnic Christmas: best non-treacly kids gifts I’ve seen, including Alessi cutlery and a silver snowsuit
Even*Cleveland: witty and erudite themed guides, worth diving into the archives
Jane on Jeans: beautiful candy jars + small objects to stuff them with (genius!) by Jane Herman
Gift Guide: if the old Neiman Marcus Christmas Book had a Substack
The Rose Period: gifts organized by color—for and by the art history gal in your life— such as neon watercolors and French butter
Everyday Objects: inspiration for shopping in your local hardware store (my pick in this year’s, volume 5)
Blackbird Spyplane: thoughtful gift-giving “concepts,” many under-$100, including custom pet portraits and ribbon-handled produce bags
S.P.A.: bullet points for the heat aesthete + bathing culture aficionado
Last but not least…
Huge thanks to Bon Appetit for including the Herman Miller x Heath Gathered limited-edition collection on a full page in its December gift guide issue. I’m assuming it’s still true that publicists would give their right arm for this kind of earned media placement in a print gift guide… so it means a lot that the editors just loved the collection, and cared enough to borrow product, art direct a photo shoot, and include it in their final cut. Thank you!
Last year’s gift guide still hits, if I do say so myself (rocks, eggs cups, modernist silver) and the prior year’s was something of an etiquette guide for gift-giving (more fun than it sounds!). Both still relevant thematically, even if a few of the shopping links are broken.
Reporting for spa service 🥲 obsessed with your gift guide !!!!
I wait for this year round