Laura Craik on self-gifting, taking knives off the street and festive sell-outs

“I’m glad women are finally saying I’m worth it, just like the ad always preached”
Laura Craik30 November 2017

What do you want for Christmas?’ I asked my husband over breakfast.

‘Anything from xxxx,’ he said, without missing a beat. The xxxx is because I’ve forgotten the name of the shop, and will have to ask him all over again. Maybe it’s the time of year, but truly, I’m forgetting things left, right and thingumy. ‘What do you want for Christmas?’ he asked. ‘I can’t remember,’ I said.

Normally, I ask for ‘something for the house’, like a kitchen bin, a steam cleaner or new doorknobs to replace the minging brass ones we’ve lived with since 2011. This year, I want something for me. And it seems I’m not alone. When Net-A-Porter launched its Fantasy Gifts list ‘for the woman who has almost everything’, not only was demand surprisingly strong, it was exclusively from women. Most popular was its Shoe Of The Week subscription at a cool £32,000. The It Girl Wardrobe package (£70,000), in which you fly business class, stay in a five-star hotel and have your ‘perfect wardrobe’ curated by Net-A-Porter’s fashion director, is already sold out.

This isn’t rich men mollifying their wives and mistresses: it’s sisters doing it for themselves. The biggest trend this Christmas? Not red velvet sandals; not a Saint Laurent cocktail dress, but self-gifting. The shoes on her feet? She bought them. The rock she’s rocking? She bought it. It was 16 years ago that Destiny’s Child released ‘Independent Women’. Maybe it has taken this long for all the ladies to earn sufficient funds to fulfil their vainglorious gifting fantasies. After all, the gender pay gap effectively means we’ve been working for free since 10 November.

Treat yourself: items from Net-A-Porter’s Fantasy Gift list

For all the lip service paid towards equality, we aren’t there yet. So I’m glad women are finally saying I’m worth it, just like the ad always preached. If that means buying themselves a llama shod in Prada mules, with a candyfloss tail, a chocolate mane and 18-carat-diamond eyes, then bring on the llamas. Or at least the truffled brie. Okay, the Babybel — whatever you can afford that floats your boat.

Knives are out

While most of the city twinkles under the glow of festive lights, the Croydon branch of McDonald’s was adorned with a different kind of structure. As an experiment, police erected a knife arch, in a bid to deter the growing number of young people carrying knives. There’s nothing like the urgent beep of a metal detector to get you in the mood for Christmas.

Eyevine
Evening Standard / eyevine

Do you want fries with that? All night long I hear sirens in the street and helicopters overhead as police, their numbers cut, battle to keep the streets safe. Of the 37,000 knife incidents that took place in England and Wales over the past 12 months, more than 13,000 happened in London. Go to word4weapons.co.uk for a list of knife bin locations across the city.

Advent anger

In this week’s edition of Celebs Please Think Twice Before You Put Your Name to That Lucrative Yet Overpriced Christmas Merch, we bring you Beyoncé, who I love, you love and we all love, of course. Only maybe, just maybe, we don’t need to express our love via the medium of a $12 ‘Holidayonce’ white satin tree bauble. The world is still enraged by Zoella’s £50 advent calendar (below), which featured such treasurable items as a cookie cutter and a keyring, each nestled behind one of 12 doors, for in Brexit Britain, expecting 24 doors is, frankly, greedy, even if you’re one of Zoella’s ickle primary-school fans who has saved up all her pocket money. What next? House Of Commons after-dinner mints? *googles* Dear lord, they already exist.

Zoella’s £50 advent calendar

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