For Him

Gift buying for him doesn’t have to be difficult. We just make it that way. Which is why so many guides for gifts for him land him with novelty socks, another monogrammed bottle opener or something that gathers dust in a drawer until inevitably disposed of in the dead of night. Nobody has ever asked our opinion on why such a low bar is set for men, so we sure as hell didn’t hold ours there. The pieces in our edit were chosen by us and our belief that they’re truly worth buying for a reason. Worth buying to gift, not just in that ‘this is an acceptable present’ kind of way. Things that are useful. Things that you know he’ll use, think about when using them and realise somebody has actually bothered. It’s the only benchmark we held ourselves too. Plenty of products didn’t make the cut. We poured over many well-known brands and returned them to the shelf. Instead we focused on what actually fills a need, appeases a desire or has some weight behind it. Products that aren’t simply a gag gift, but the gift that ends up in his kitchen drawer or his desk draw orman crammer and just earns it’s place there week in, week out. We wanted stuff that smacked of being considered without crossing that fine line into try hard territory. Trying too hard is just another form of failure. We’ve included gifts for the man that is easy to buy for and seriously deserves a treat rather than just something nice. Gifts for the man who has literally everything, they don’t. We promise you that nobody has everything. And finally, gifts for the man who you haven’t quite got to know that well yet and the present has to speak volumes about who you are as a friend. The edit is deliberately small. A curated list of products we really rate is better than an extensive list of products we’re convinced you’ll buy. If your sitting there wondering about all of them. That’s great. They’re all worth spending your money on and you just get to pick. We’ve done the hard bit.

Aftershave

Buying aftershave for someone else is an educated guess at best. You know they wear something, you smell it once in an elevator or across a dinner table and suddenly you’re in a department store with an enthusiastic stranger spraying you in the face with no real idea what you’re looking for. We’ve stood there. It’s not pleasant. So we did things differently. Instead of approaching aftershave as we would any other fragrance category, we started by thinking about how you look at any good gift; what does this say about the person that’s going to receive it? Not just…

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Best Man

Being asked to be best man seems like one of those ludicrously huge moments when it happens to you. Your buddy is entrusting you with his friendship more than anyone else. It’s honourable. It’s scary. The gift you give him should reflect that. Mean something. Beyond ‘thanks for coming on the stag’. This is my friend. I know what we have and I wanted to celebrate it properly. advertisement There’s a problem. Best man gifts are kind of everywhere. And most of them are rubbish. Etched whisky bottles that will never tell you anything you didn’t already know. Keyrings with…

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Boyfriend

Buying a boyfriend a gift is frustratingly difficult. Not because he's high maintenance or weird (although he could be those things!) but because most options just don't feel like enough. Socks? Beer batter cue ring? Man boots?! We've all grabbed boyfriend gifts that fall into these categories and immediately regretted it when watch them sit...awkwardly...on the receiver's desk. Done. So for this gift guide we went about it with a different mentality. We asked ourselves what we'd want if someone was trying to show they actually knew us rather than knew we liked beer and jeans. Suddenly a lot of…

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Brother

Brothers are difficult. We think that's because they exist in this weird limbo. Tight enough that you feel cheap buying them something impersonal but not usually close enough that you've spent hours talking about the kind of thing they’d actually like. You know them better than most but still, every year it’s the same question staring back at you. We wanted stuff that was as tough to get wrong as we are. We built this because we were sick of falling back on whisky gifts and novelty socks. Don’t get us wrong, we like whisky and we like novelty socks,…

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Cufflinks

There’s a quietly pleasing feeling about cufflinks done right. Small enough to forget about, but important enough that the right pair change how a shirt feels as much as they do how it looks. We’ve thought about them a lot over the years. More than is probably healthy, because wearing an ugly pair of cufflinks is a sad affair and a great pair are some of the most considered gifts you can buy for a man who has everything he needs. The occassion is usually self-explanatory. Weddings, milestone birthdays, promotions, retirement. Someone who wears a double cuff shirt and deserves…

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Dad

Buying for Dad is one of the more quietly challenging pursuits when it comes to gift-giving. It’s not that he’s hard to love, or that he’s hard to buy for. It’s that he’s spent thirty years telling you that he doesn’t need anything and believing it, at least partially. He has stuff. Good stuff that he bought himself, probably many years ago, and that he has no immediate intention of replacing. What this means is that the most natural strategy of wandering around until you bump into something vaguely appropriate is also the strategy most likely to result in something…

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Father's Day

Father’s Day gets a bad rap. Not because fathers are difficult to purchase gifts for, oh no. We stopped caring what we give dads the minute we realised we were supposed to care in the first place. And once June rolls around we all just default to the selfsame pile of who-really-cares merchandise from down-the-road-industrial-unit-shop. BBQ toolset in a tin. Novelty printed socks. A mug with ‘World’s Best’ filched from your child’s homework and slapped next to something he has never in his life claimed to be best at. We’re sorry for every single one of those gifts, frankly. And…

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Grandad

Finding the right gift for grandad is trickier than you’d think. He’s probably owned most things he’d want for long enough already. He’ll say that he doesn’t want anything and he’ll mean it in the kind of way that your other relatives don’t. He’s also the only person who will really notice whether you’ve made an effort or not. You know the ones we mean. That combo makes most people head straight for socks or a tin of biscuits and we get the thinking, but we also think he deserves something better than that. Our problem was that we couldn’t…

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Hip Flasks

There’s something quietly brilliant about a hip flask when done right. We’re not talking novelty ones in the shape of a guitar, or the frustratingly thin pressed steel jobs that leak all over your jacket pocket. A proper flask, that has heft to it, that speaks volumes when you hand it over. That’s what we’ve searched for when compiling this list. Like many gift ideas, the occasion is almost always the same. A best man who already has cufflinks. A father who buys whatever he needs for himself. A friend who drinks well enough to know the difference between something…

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Husband

Buying for your husband is harder than anyone likes to admit. You know him better than anyone in the world and knowing him well isn’t what qualifies you. The closer you are to someone the more awesome OR horrible gift guilt can be. He will not say anything about a lazy gift. He will accept it with perfect grace and that’s even worse. Our guys gift guide was built around that idea. Men are egregiously underserved by gift guides. Novelties they’ll smile at then promptly ignore, gadgets they ‘could definitely use’ but actually have no use for, or gagking sets…

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Man Cave

Every man has a spot in his house that’s quietly and unashamedly his. It might be a garage with a dartboard and a bar fridge. It might be a spare room with a projector screen and a shelf full of nerd loot. Doesn’t matter which room it is. What matters is that it’s his and that he’s usually gone to great lengths to make it feel like somewhere you actually want to be. It’s why gifts for that room are some of the most rewarding to buy. Because they’ve got an obvious home. Unlike other gifts you’re not hoping something…

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Shaving Kits

Most guys will shave for most of their lives with whatever razor was packaged free with a store loyalty card and a gel that smells like a chlorine soaked rag. Fine. It’ll work. But being good enough and actually being good are two very different things and the right shaving kit—one that’s been put some actual thought into—changes that half-hour process of procrastination into something that takes thirty seconds longer but feels worlds better. That’s the gap we wanted to bridge with this guide. We only included things on this list that we would give. Gift Picker style. Not just…

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Son

Buying gifts for your son should feel straightforward. It's never straightforward. When they’re younger it’s simple. Once they hit teens, doubt creeps in. As adults, with distinct tastes and lives of their own, you find yourself staring blankly and contemplating if gift cards even constitute a gift. For the record, they do. We built this guide because the gap between wanting to buy the perfect gift and knowing what that perfect gift is can feel wider than it should. The reason you can’t find it? Translation. You know your son better than most. But understanding your son and understanding what…

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Tie Clips

The average man that wears a tie has one tie clip if he’s lucky, none. It was given to him at some stage rather than selected. There’s a gap between what most men own and what the well dressed man needs. That’s where this Edit comes in. A tie clip is detail people notice but don’t know why. When it’s right the whole outfit just lands. When it’s missing you can feel like something’s not quite finished but nobody can put their finger on what. This Edit has been put together with one man in mind. Generally speaking. The man…

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Uncle

Uncles are a weird and wonderful thing. They’re not parents, so you don’t get any of that pressure. They’re not a stranger, so you don’t get any of that weirdness. The best of them are people who slip you an extra twenty when they’re drunk at Christmas, back you up in fights you shouldn’t be having, and have strong opinions on stuff no-one else in the family cares about. Uncles have oddly specific personalities. That’s exactly what makes buying for them so satisfying, and so damn difficult. The issue is, uncles don’t ask for things. They’ve either got what they…

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