Woah, it’s getting close.
Lists and pending orders and sweaty field trips round departments stores, where you feel so overwhelmed and claustrophobic — such a consumer — that you just pick things up and put them down again until you find yourself back out on the street empty-handed and depleted, stabbing away at Amazon on your phone.
However organised and imaginative you are when it comes to Christmas presents, there is always one person who is a bastard to buy for and there is usually another person who you have forgotten or who just… pitches up, inconveniently armed with a present for you.
So here’s how to win. Aēsop. And one of its new kits. Believe me when I say that there is something about this stylish apothecary brand that wins over everyone; male or female; young or old; spoilt or unassuming. Perhaps my favourite is the exceedingly chic Melodist kit, which is a nod to interiors as well as to bathrooms. All leather, cardboard and glass, it is properly unisex and properly good-looking, housing an aromatic (grapefruit, jasmine and cedar) Olous room spray, a hand-milled soap with bergamot and Tahitian lime, and its witty, citrus-y Post-poo drops, which actually work.
Somehow these elegant kits read as thoughtful — as though you have genuinely wondered what someone might like and enjoy. Even for cool snobs, the low-key modishness of Aēsop delivers. So I’ve got one on stand-by and, if I’m honest, I’m not at all thrilled about the prospect of giving it away.
The Melodist kit, £61 (selfridges.com)
