For Her
The issue with most gift lists for women is that they presume too much and consider too little. They assemble the same bath gift sets, the same novelty jewellery, the same anything-but-personal picks. We’ve never loved that method and we didn’t build this list that way.
Instead we started with her. The real woman in your life, not the one built out of misogynistic assumptions. We considered the sister who has really strong opinions about coffee and would rather receive one wonderful thing than three crowdpleasers. We thought of the girlfriend who already has the candle and truly does not need another one. We searched for gifts that are chosen with care, not just assembled at random, and that difference is more important than most people realise.
Care is the watchword here. Each of these gifts has earned its spot on the list. We’ve asked ourselves would I truly give this to her? rather than does it look nice packaged in a tote? The latter questions eliminates thousands of mass-produced items. The world is full of gifts that look nice on Instagram but are unpleasantly disappointing in real life. We want none of it here.
We’ve also tried to account for the variety of occasions that you’ll encounter over the year. Because letting someone pick their own gift is always going to be different than buying for a coworker who’s moving on, or your mum who says she wants nothing at all, or that sister whose taste you’ll never truly know. You’ll find gifts for all those occasions here, and yes we have spent the requisite amount of time thinking about each one.
There are gifts here that she’ll treat herself to one day but probably isn’t allowed to buy. That’s often the most helpful place to be when picking gifts for someone else. There are gifts she mentioned once and then forgot you were listening. And there are some truly, truly lovely things as well.
This isn’t a list for every occasion. Nor does it contain every gifted purchased this year. We are simply trying to give you a better version of the answer. We are trying to save you the hour of scrolling and the existential dread that comes with it. You’re welcome.