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Logan's Style Watch
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The Gift of the Magi
by Logan Bentley Lessona
ROME -- Do students in high school still read O Henry's "Gift of the Magi" in English class? I surely hope so, because I think it's one of the finest short stories I ever read, and it has everything to learn about love and generosity and, yes, even irony.
Just in case you missed the story, it's about a young married couple around the end of the 19th century who are very poor and want to give each other a special gift for Christmas. She decides on a watch chain for his beloved pocket watch, he opts for a gold ornament for her beautiful long hair. To pay for it he sells his precious watch, and she sells her long hair to a wigmaker to buy the watch chain End of story.
The Christmas shopping season has just opened with a bang with "Black Friday," the Friday after Thanksgiving. When did they start calling it that, and is the term really apt? Actually I shop for Christmas and birthday presents all year long.
Sophie Tucker is said to have told Senator Edward Kennedy once: "Honey, I've been rich and I've been poor and believe me, rich is better." Well, I've felt poor at some times and rich at others, but I've always tried to find very special presents for the very special people in my life.
Special presents don't necessarily have to be expensive. It takes the time to think about what that person really loves, perhaps never bought for himself or herself, along with a good imagination. It also helps to be on the lookout all year long for special and unusual things.
My grandmother Ethel always presented us with the most wonderful stockings at Christmas, filled with amusing, useful, and fun goodies. She bought some at the five and dime store up the street on Connecticut Avenue in Washington until it closed, which was devastating for her.
She ordered other things from catalogs like Lillian Vernon, or picked up little things when she went on trips with my grandfather. It was always a joy on Christmas morning to start pulling things out of the stockings. I have always tried to do the same thing for my family.
The other day I had to make a one-day trip to Florence with my sister-in-law. We managed to find an hour to walk down Via Calzaiuoli, a long pedestrian street that goes from the Duomo to Piazza della Signoria and is full of shops. In a picture-framing shop I stocked up on small leather traveling picture frames at $10 each for stocking gifts. When I saw my sister-in-law admiring an inlaid wooden frame for $15 I surreptitiously indicated to the owner to slip it into my shopping bag. At Bizzari, an incredible shop that sells everything from photo chemicals to special oil and paints for artists to winemakers' supplies, I found real perfume essences like tuberose, lilac, jasmine, and hyacinth for $17, more stocking stuffers.
Years ago there were big storms in Tuscany that uprooted thousands of olive trees, some of them over 100 years old. A favorite shop in Montalcino had artisans create from that wood beautiful salad bowls, cheese boards, and even sets of salad servers, the latter costing around $10. They also had beautiful woven baskets typical of the area. I lined the baskets with excelsior, filled them with bottles of honey, olive oil, wine, the salad servers, ceramic spoon rests in the shape of vegetables that I had bought at the market in Orbetello, and other assorted goodies, wrapped the baskets in transparent cellophane, tied them with bunches of raffia and trimmed them with dried wheat.
Here in Italy we don't have "gift with purchase" from the cosmetic companies so when possible I always take advantage of the offers I receive, especially from Clinique, Estee' Lauder, and Lancome. The minimum you have to spend now is around $17.50, but I can always use an extra moisturizer or suntan lotion and I make a real "figurone" (big splash) with the "gift" which is usually a makeup bag with several lipsticks, eyeshadows, perfume sample, comb or brush and other goodies.
One year when I was feeling flush I ordered a silk bathrobe in patterned silk from the late Carlo Palazzi, a menswear designer and good friend, made to measure for one of my best friends. For a zillionaire who had done me the biggest favor imaginable I found an artisan right in the center of Rome who is mad for things Western, and he made a pair of chaps with hand embossing that has made my friend the envy of every cowboy in the West.
In a real emergency I turn to Tiffany (especially here in Italy) where for less than $75 you can have a nifty sterling silver key ring engraved with initials, placed in a robin's egg blue box, tied with white satin ribbon, and the matching shopping bag is included. Now, as far as I'm concerned, that's style!
© 2000 Logan Bentley Lessona
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Fashion and Design from Italy has been on the web since February 1995. It was the first ever web about fashion. We're working on a new section about Italian Design - industrial design that includes furniture, ceramics, bathrooms, home and office accessories, automobiles and other articles that have won prizes throughout the world and are exhibited in museums such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
