Give Good Gift: 2022
It’s that time of the year again. Below is our 2022 holiday gift guide – these are the (unsponsored) things we genuinely love and we are happy to share them with you.
How Luxury Fashion Killed the Joy of Shopping
This past summer I went to an Hérmes store on rue St-Honoré in Paris, with the idea of buying a cardholder. The one I wanted was sold out, so I decided to browse the store, which was already full of shoppers at ten in the morning. I was almost on the way out when a thin black leather cuff with a matte black leather buckle caught my eye. Attracted by its subtle elegance, I bought it on the spot. By the time I was done with my tax refund process, the sales associate who was helping me magically appeared at my side, with the cuff gift-wrapped and swaddled inside the iconic orange shopping bag. This was one of my most pleasant shopping experiences of the past several years, and an increasingly rare one.
Joseph Beuys: Four Books in a Box
We live in a sterile age. Nothing reminds one of this fact like the work of the German artist Joseph Beuys. It is anything but sterile – dirt, earth, organic matter were at its center. Beuys wallowed in the dirt – it was his connection to the planet we were busy ruining, as he liked to remind us.
A new book, or rather four books in a box, called Four Books in a Box, published by Steidl, and out today, reminds us of this message. Prosaically called, the compendium is anything but prosaic. As an object it is also earthy. There is not a hint of gloss in its sturdy case, fabric covers, and mostly black and white pages. As the hand passes over the pages, one feels its presence, its thingness, its physical presence in the physical universe.