From the Holiday Stockpile

I have a weak spot for things. Namely, I have an inexplicable predilection for scrolling through grid after grid of meticulously curated products halfway between meaningless objet d'art and handy daily necessities with a look of rapt appreciation on my face. As such, I can be a lot of fun during the holidays.

It's not that I'm an expert gifter - no, I have spectacularly misjudged friends in the past and gifted them anything from basic Neutrogena toiletries to high end fragrances that stayed sealed in their boxes for years afterwards. 

My usefulness, instead, is in mentioning the right label to the right person and helping them look like they really know what they're doing when they shop for their Xmas lists online. Like they spend their downtime perusing hyper-modern lifestyle magazines filled with more empty space than text. Like they lurk around Brooklyn and the West Village, trying out gastropubs and tea ateliers wearing Oxfords and oversized knits. Like they have 100k Instagram followers and an apartment in Portland where they lovingly house the world's largest collection of artisan mugs. Like they've traveled a lot and have developed such specific taste that mainstream department stores just don't cut it anymore. For that, I'm here to help.

Below: 15 brands and / or retailers that are doing something so very right:

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15 // Scandinavian Designs

Skrive desk $500, Spotlight table lamp $140, Klemens chair $900

Next time you find yourself in a posh furniture store like this one, asking, "What moron would consider a fucking $140 lamp," just know that it's me. Hi, I'm the dummy. Mind you, I would never actually shell out the cash, but I like knowing that a lamp of the perfect angularity is out there and buyable for less than an entire paycheck.

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14 // Mullein & Sparrow

Facial steam $22, bath salts $29, body oil $18 

I'm a big believer in personal care products that are almost too pretty to use up, because they add to your living space in a subtly soothing way. I mean, bathrooms are ugly enough to begin with. 

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13 // Are You Am I

Lilia top $179

Most were understandably skeptical when fashion blogger Rumi Neely debuted a line of luxury clothing, because the initial offerings were a set of perhaps poorly chosen loose tees. But in the months that followed, aggressively Californian blouses and crop tops and slip dresses were rolled out, and now I'm not convinced that Kendall Jenner shops anywhere else anymore.

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12 // Poketo

Cory bifold wallet $68, journal $16, wall vessel and planter set $28

If anything on this page is at all useful, it's probably sold by Poketo, a retailer of cute odds and ends for the home and office. They remind me vaguely of being in a toy store, surrounded by bright colors and eye-popping textures and adorable packaging.

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11 / Mast Chocolate

Most flavors about $20 for 7 oz.

This Brooklyn-based chocolatier's products are not typically stocked where one would buy food, and that just tickles me. It's like they've already admitted to themselves that chocolate is secondary, and branding comes first. That's cool. Why give out Ferrero pyramids when you can give out these babies & look super stylish by association?

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10 // Larsson and Jennings

Lugano $295; Lugano $315; Saxon $1395

I like a timepiece that is as likely to belong to a man as it is to a woman, and Larsson and Jennings' Swiss-made watches have so few few embellishments that they fit that niche. In the watch world, these sit on the other end of the swinging pendulum from the chunky, glitzy pieces we're more used to.

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09 // Hem

Key side table $175

This photo by Hem is great because 1) I would never think to market tables by arranging them like War of the Worlds alien pods coming to exterminate us all, and 2) there is nothing happening here. Three lines and a disc and that's supposed to be a table. All it takes is one of these beauties to make you look like the kind of person who goes to the MoMA and knows what's going on.

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08 // Sort of Coal

Hand soap $10; bincho $93; char oil cream $33; binchotan sculpture $396

Did I read the 14-paragraph "about" page on this label's website? No. Did I need to read it to know that this oak charcoal bath product venture is mostly BS? No. But do I love the stark minimalism of their packaging and the unabashedly self-important feel of the whole thing, bordering dangerously on the absurd? Yes. 

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07 // Anna Sheffield

Hazeline ceremonial stacking suite, $8300

The holiday season is engagement season, which means I know what I'll be doing: scrolling through Instagram crying inside at all the jewelry posts flying past. One profile I follow is that of New York based designer Anna Sheffield, who offers the perfect antidote to all the tired, staid styles we're too used to seeing on our grandmothers' fingers. Sheffield's signature concept is a striking burst of ray-like stones that are meant to sit atop a solitaire like a crown.

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06 // Ode to Things

Cinqpoints Archiblocks $70, Kami wood cups from $70, Ancap Verona cappuccino cup $36

I'm not entirely clear on what Ode to Things really is. It's part museum, part curio cabinet, part IKEA on steroids, and part actual, functioning home goods shop. Here there be everyday objects barely recognizable as what they are, pared down and Designed within an inch of their lives.

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05 // The Reformation

Aurelia top $128, Gemma dress $278

As label names go, I don't think there's one more striking than this. I always love telling friends about this eco-friendly clothing line: Reformation - gawd, that name. Even before you show people the plunging necklines, drapey silhouettes and 90s influence, it already sounds great. 

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04 // Le Labo

Santal 26 home fragrance, $125 for 100 ml

By now it's inescapably clear that I like my objets pretentious to the point of humorous absurdity, and near the top of the hierarchy is the unisex fragrance line by Le Labo of NYC. They have a "manifesto." There's a section of their website titled "oddities." They sell a diffuser made from reclaimed wood & vintage style bulbs. It's fantastic. Pair responsibly with craft beer & Restoration Hardware furniture.

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03 // Leibal

Lift coasters $69 for 4, Bang and Olufsen Beoplay H7 $449, marble wall clock $269

Like Ode to Things, Leibal is a curated collection of aesthetically pleasing odds and ends that seem to exist simply for curation's sake. Browsing the site, I'm left with a lot of questions. Who has nearly 300 bucks for a marble wall clock? And more importantly, what wall would support the sheer weight of said clock?

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02 // Article Magazine

Issues range from $14 to $17

Often I have trouble finding man-gifts, but soon I may just start ordering copies of London-based Article magazine for the more sartorially-inclined men in my life. They're printed on thick paper - coffee table-worthy - and feature moody, intense photography of everything from modern art and architecture to a star du jour.  

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01 // Artifact Uprising

Envelopes for $1.40 Save the Dates, wood calendar $30, soft cover photo book from $18

And finally, nothing inspires me creatively to the point of full-blown anger like the online print shop Artifact Uprising. Neutral paper tones, crisp serif fonts, generous white spacing - this place ticks all my aesthetic boxes re: how I want my photos of the Pacific Northwest to be presented. A gorgeous, unexpected photo gift source if you ever want to distance yourself from Shutterfly and Tinyprints.

Still.

Cat bedding by Plow & Hearth, matte finish water bottle by S'Well, lights by Urban Outfitters.

Sometimes when I lie awake into the early hours of the morning, I like to think about all the rooms I have ever temporarily thought of as home.

As a young adult -  especially in college, the memory of which is still fresh in my mind - one can feel uncomfortably itinerant. The four walls of your childhood room suddenly seem too close together, and the shelves upon shelves of YA books and stuffed animals so cloyingly juvenile. You're Grown Up now, after all - and this is not home any longer.

A handful of dorm rooms serve as temporary home bases: different residential halls, each with their own pitfalls (Edwards so cramped and musty, Campbell with those charming centipedes), and having to move in and out at the end and beginning of each oppressively hot summer. Each May I tore myself away from a small single bedroom I'd only just become accustomed to, and with choked back, purposeful melancholy, packed and stored my things, hoping desperately that next year's lottery-won room would measure up. Then, in September, I painstakingly arranged all my unpacked, familiar objects (rainbow alarm clock, stand-up fan, posters and odds & ends) in exactly the same places relative to each other. When finished, nothing would seem quite right. And I would begin the school year with a sense of disjointedness and dissonance.

Traveling was the hardest and the loneliest. If I think back to New York City in 2012, the bottom of my stomach drops away and I remember dinners eaten alone and sleepless nights on a fourteenth floor watching traffic come in from the Williamsburg Bridge. I think of a bare-bones room with a microwave and linoleum floor and a loud shared bathroom, and of my rickety top bunk that stood too near the ceiling. And even lonelier was London, my narrow oblong place with a drippy sink and a drafty window facing a row of brown Edwardian apartments and their skeletal rooftop antennae. It was never warm in that room, and I spent most nights bundled in a down duvet with a mug of hot water from the hallway bathroom.

Each room I have lived in, I have grown to love, and stayed in each for too short a time. I feel as though I have left little pieces of myself here and there - in all my tiny Princeton singles overlooking green yards, in my Lower East Side building, in the heart of Bloomsbury, and up four flights of ancient stairs in Oxford. I feel stretched thin - too much of me spent loving too many lost, transient spaces.

When I moved into my current apartment I did not expect it to be for more than ten months. But it has been 23 months and counting, the longest time in recent memory that I have ever lived anywhere - that I have ever stayed still - and parts of me are creeping into the place, lending it a domestic warmth I'd been afraid to cultivate until now. A pitcher here, a placemat there, and piles of books on every horizontal surface. 

I am beginning to stay still, and for now I prefer it - a kind of peace.

Monochrome at home

"Reverse denim" duffel, Everlane.

I am mad specific when it comes to buying practical things.

I didn't used to be this way. I think it came about as a response to the relatively novel feeling of financial freedom. Now that I can pick my own coasters or shower curtains or water bottles — you know, boring necessities — I can run myself ragged trying to find ones that coordinate with every other object in my life. It brings me a weird sense of peace, this Extreme Matching: Home Edition. 

So naturally there is a lot of gray in my life.

And naturally I appreciate when a retailer makes it very easy for me to hunt down only pieces with clean, sharp lines, striking textures, and a desaturated palette. 

Watch by Aark Collective, notebooks by Dear Maison via Poketo.

Honestly, the lamp was a particularly fortunate Home Goods find. .