26 November 2013

Bex's 2013 Christmas Gift Guide: Girls

Welcome to the first post in the 2013 edition of my annual Christmas gift guides. Today I'll be highlighting ten gift ideas for the girls on your gift list. Most of these items are under £50, but if your budget is a little tighter, check out my Stocking Fillers and Secret Santa guide. Or, if you have some extra pennies this year, some of the items in my gift guide for guys would work equally well for the ladies in your life. And if you need more inspiration, Selfridges has just released its annual Christmas discount voucher, which gets you 20% off almost everything in store and online from tomorrow until Sunday. Now, onto my selections.

Clothes and accessories
1. Kate Spade pop-top gloves from Selfridges (or the UK Kate Spade stores). £45. At this time of year, it's nice to have a pair of gloves that combines flexibility and style, and it's easy to convert these fingerless gloves into mittens when the threatened Big Freeze hits. I think the monochrome colourway is the chicest, but if you're into clashing, go for the pink and red combo.

Kate Spade pop-top gloves. Image from: Kate Spade

2. Medium zip pouch from Fossil. £49. Speaking of once-verboten colour combinations, I love Fossil's range of blue-and-green accessories. This leather zip pouch will fit an iPad Mini or most of your other necessities. The tote bag and clutch are cute too.

3. Cheek Thrills neon vest and knickers set from Austique. £35. I'm somewhat biased because turquoise and pink are my favourite colours and because I can never resist a good pun, but I think this lace-trimmed underwear set is great: cute and comfortable.

4. ThoughtBlossoms gold initial necklace from Etsy. $35 (about £22). I'm a sucker for pretty much anything with initials on, and these delicate gold necklaces definitely fit the bill. You can personalise the charm with one to three characters or a design stamp. F-A-B.

Home
5. Mean Girls poster from Print Club London. £40. In case you're one of the few people who can't quote along with the script of Mean Girls, this screen-printed poster, produced for Somerset House's 2013 Summer Screen season, will help you out. It's pink, but not saccharine. Just stop trying to make fetch happen, OK?

Mean Girls poster from Print Club London.

6. Le Livre 2014 diary from Present & Correct. £17.50. The polar opposite of item #5 on the decorum stakes, this week-to-view diary is très chic indeed. In fact, it's designed to look just like the novels published by the iconic Gallimard publishing house. The Present & Correct website is filled with beautiful and useful stationery, writing and organisation products, so it would be hard to go wrong gift-wise.

7. Three-bunch subscription to Bloom & Wild flower delivery service. From £40. Everyone loves to get nice things in the post and Bloom & Wild will send out a beautifully arranged posy of long-lasting flowers, carefully packed and preserved in a box small enough to fit through most letter boxes. For £40, your recipient will get three "bright & wild" boxes (you can choose how often you would like them delivered); larger, more indulgent options are also available.

8. Six Damien Hirst anamorphic espresso cups from Other Criteria. £85. I love this set of bold, colourful saucers that reflect their designs onto the plain, mirrored surface of the matching cups. You can also buy an individual cup-and-saucer set for £15 if you already have too many espresso cups in your life. Not that I'm projecting.

Damien Hirst anamorphic espresso cup set from Other Criteria.

Beauty
9. Laura Mercier Tarte au Citron travel set from Selfridges. £30. Laura Mercier does great gift sets, and her body products always smell good enough to eat. This luxurious lemon-tart scented set contains a body wash, body butter, hand cream and fragrance. You could also split the set into four smaller gifts or stocking fillers.

10. Dangerous Nail Files from the Conran Shop. £19.95. This set of three nail files, shaped like a gun, a meat cleaver and a chainsaw, would probably make a good companion piece for the Mean Girls poster, or for a copy of cognitive linguist George Lakoff's classic text, Women, Fire & Dangerous Things. They're a little bit girly and a lot tough.

Dangerous Nail Files from the Conran Shop.

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