Welcome to T List, a newsletter from the editors of T Magazine. For this week and the next, we’ve turned it into a holiday gift guide, with recommendations from the T staff on what we’re coveting for ourselves this season, as well as the gifts we’re thinking of giving to our friends and loved ones. sign up here to meet us in your inbox every Wednesday. You can always reach us at tlist@nytimes.com.
Scent of the season
An essential oil made with your Christmas tree
For 11 months out of the year, I pretend I don’t like Christmas, but when I smell fresh pine needles for the first time every December, from a stall selling wreaths on a corner in New York, perhaps, or from a garland on the street. Friend’s mantelpiece – Illusion is shattered quickly. Few scents are so lush and woody, or so evocative of cold nights warmed by candles and wine. This year, Flamingo Estate, the Los Angeles-based food and wellness company, offers a new service through which you will pick up your Christmas tree from your door (if you live in New York or Los Angeles) in late December and distill steamed. its branches to create an aromatic essential oil that will then be mailed to you in a fancy glass bottle, meaning your home can smell like a pine forest until the end of winter and beyond. Any residue left over from the process will be used as compost for the brand’s garden in Highland Park.
What better way to sweeten the holiday season than with real candy? For the artistically inclined chocolate lovers in your life, try a La Nef Chocolate confectionery bar in small batches. Each one is made in Bath, Maine, and wrapped in packaging that features the work of a local artist. I am a fan of dark chocolate with nonpareils and the art of the painter Caroline Boylston. (A portion of the proceeds from this bar goes to Spindleworks, a nonprofit arts center for adults with disabilities.) Also worth trying and looking at are the ginger, bay leaf, and chamomile flower bars that are part of the Casa Bosques Makers series ($ 20 each). ) – were a collaboration between Mexico City-based chocolatier and chef and artist DeVonn Francis, and all proceeds from them support trans black people through Project Okra, or the brand’s three seasonal bars. , which include a crispy and spicy Speculoos cookie covered in rich dark chocolate and in a package printed with photographs taken by Casa Bosques founder Rafael Prieto on his travels. For a completely different type of gift, consider a box of crystals from Balbosté, inspired by the Japanese sweet kohakutou, or their matcha fortune cookies with white chocolate coating (with personalized messages inside), so delicate they can only be buy in person, at the Balbosté store in Paris.
High culture
Glass tubes in fun tones and fruity shapes
In 2019, Brett Heyman, the designer behind fashion accessory brand Edie Parker, best known for its acrylic clutches with a wry sense of humor, launched Flower by Edie Parker, offering lighters, rolling trays and other related products. cannabis. ephemeral, all in vibrant hues like aquamarine, periwinkle and bubblegum pink. Inspired by grapes, a banana, an orange, and my favorite, a cherry, these borosilicate glass tubes from the line double as cheesy household items that can be displayed even when parents are visiting. With Flower, Heyman aims to further destigmatize cannabis use and support criminal reform efforts, so if you’re looking to give back this season, consider purchasing one of these fun floral t-shirts or bags – 15 percent of those proceeds of which, depending on the item, will be donated to Project Last Prisoner, Feeding America, the National Center for Transgender Equality or the Association of Women’s Prisons.
Delicate decorations
Kitsch ornaments and handmade garlands
After years of living in a minimalist studio, I am now the lucky tenant of an apartment with a living room, one with dark wood paneling and leaded glass windows offering sometimes snowy views, which almost calls for some Christmas decorations. After much displacement, I landed in these ginkgo leaf shaped dip-dyed petal paper garlands, which are handcrafted by artisans in Delhi and available from British brand Toast, and in some old-fashioned kitsch ornaments from John Derian. New this year are a variety of mushrooms and several New York City-centric options, including an especially brilliant Statue of Liberty. They are sure to please the crowd, so having made an exceptional effort, you may need to throw a party.
Mushrooms can be an ideal food among the health conscious. guys right now, but a funghi delivery will still make for a delightfully unexpected holiday gift. New York-based Smallhold is on a mission to reduce the distance its mushrooms have to travel to reach customers, and has installed miniature organic mushroom farms at the Standard Hotel, East Village, the Lower Eastside Girls Club and several other places in the city. It also offers grow kits that allow the recipient to grow mushrooms in their own kitchen. Each comes with a Blue Oyster or Lion’s Mane Mushroom Starter Block which, if properly cared for (all a hobbyist grower will need is water, a rubber band, and a knife) can produce up to two pounds of fresh mushrooms. the course of two or three waves, or harvests. Given all that payoff, you might consider pairing a kit with the brand’s new cookbook, “Mushrooms in the Middle,” which enhances the food from a side dish to the main event.
On the couch
Four sumptuous shots
In my childhood home, snuggling up on the couch to watch a seasonal movie has become as much of a Christmas tradition as decorating the tree (we are a “Christmas Story” family), and is essential to the viewing experience the Perfect Launch: Ezcaray, a Spanish-based textile house, hand-knits its Matisse rugs in bright hues from a blend of fibers, including mohair and wool. Jonathan Saunders, the fashion designer turned furniture, offers a cheery striped blanket (named after his designer assistant Nani) with contrasting color panels. For a more neutral option, there’s Blacksaw’s reversible black and white Icon blanket, which is made from baby alpaca and was designed in collaboration with Los Angeles artist John Zabawa, or Attersee’s Herringbone wrap, which has sleek leather. trimmed and looks as graceful lying on a chair as it is worn over the shoulders.
Lucky charms
Letter pendants made of diamonds, quartz and gold
The striking gold medallions from New York-based jewelry brand Foundrae, which are often fused with astrological or mythological symbols, have a slightly unearthly feel, as if they are vessels inhabited by powerful yet benign spirits. However, the line’s sealed initial charms are especially otherworldly, and one would make a perfect gift if you’re looking to really treat a loved one this month. Comprised of a diamond-encrusted gold letter within two crystalline quartz planes sealed within a gold casing, each piece recalls an ancient creature preserved in amber, or perhaps a part of a long-lost missive frozen in ice.
Table garnishes
An ice cube to keep the punch cold and glasses to serve it
For me, the inability to receive people for much of the last two years due to the pandemic has It inspired a renewed interest in entertaining my apartment, which has meant renovating my dishes, and all the better if the pieces themselves reflect interpersonal bonds. This mini ice bucket from Carolina Irving & Daughters, founded by the textile designer and her two daughters, Olympia and Ariadne – was inspired by medieval ceramics and was made in Portugal. And the iridescent Nassau mugs from Sirius Glassworks in Ontario mark the first collaboration between glassblower Peter Gudrunas, who founded the brand in the 1970s, and his daughter, artist and filmmaker Iris Fraser-Gudrunas. They are the kind of special handmade pieces that your guests will want to have too, and you would be a hero to please them.