Choose to gift books as beautiful to behold as they are to read…
“I don’t design clothes. I design dreams,” Ralph Lauren once declared. Ralph Lauren A Way of Living: Home, Design, Inspiration by Ralph Lauren and Mary Randolph Carter not only commemorates the 40th anniversary of his home collection but includes a peek into his magnificent homes – from a sprawling ranch in Colorado and an island retreat in Jamaica, to a Fifth Avenue penthouse in New York, a seaside home in Montauk and a country estate in Bedford. (Rizzoli, €68).
Feeding Creativity by Mary McCartney combines her two passions of (vegetarian) food and photography. For Cate Blanchett, she served some hearty tomato soup and sourdough, for Catherine and David Bailey she made a towering berry trifle music, and for David Hockney red onion, pea and spinach tart was on the menu. The recipes, portraits and observations of Mary’s life are honest and homely. (Taschen, €57).
Mark Seliger’s Vanity Fair: Oscar Night Sessions documents ten years of attending glamorous after-parties with more than 200 portraits including Lady Gaga, Robert de Niro and Timothée Chalamet. (Abrams, €55).
Also a must for any chic coffee table is Slim Aarons: The Essential Collection with text by Shawn Waldon. Flip through the iconic images, many previously unseen, of “attractive people doing attractive things in attractive places” and you’ll find Marianne Faithful and Mick Jagger at Castletown House, 1968. (Abrams, €149).
Erotic Vagrancy: Everything about Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, took author Roger Lewis 13 years to write. Touted as one of the best biographies of the year, this promises a feast of new facts, jewels, private jets, yachts and 1960s excess. (Quercus, €30.96).
The One Day Box: A Life-Changing Love of Home by British interior designer Flora Soames documents her passion for collecting fabrics, wallpaper patterns and exotic textiles as well as her maximalist English country aesthetic and home in Norfolk. (Rizzoli, €56).
STOCKING FILLERS
For the poetry fan, give La Bougie’s Sage & Bitter Orange candle, €27, with Wendy Cope’s latest anthology The Orange and Other Poems (Faber, €8.27).
For the teenager, a Sol de Janeiro Brazilian Bum Bum Cream, €25, and Museum Bums: A Cheeky Look at Butts in Art, (Abrams, €17). This celebration of shapely derrières encourages readers to learn something new and have a chuckle.
For the gardener, slip in a trio of L’Occitane hand creams, €26.50, with The Kew Gardens Christmas Book by Jenny Linford – full of festive facts, plant-based recipes and illustrations by Irish designer Rory Hutton (www.shop.kew.org; €22).
FOR THE ARMCHAIR TRAVELLER
Extraordinary Collections: French Interiors, Flea Markets, Ateliers by French artist, designer and shopkeeper Marin Montagut celebrates the art of collecting, and features ten private homes, flea markets and ateliers where the beautiful, the strange, the rare and the curious mingle. (Flammarion, €29).
Copacabana Palace, Where Rio Starts by Francisca Matteoli celebrates the iconic Belmond hotel (aka The Copa) from its opening in 1923, to its starry studded guests and legendary parties. (Vendome, €85).
Painted Travels, by illustrator SJ Axelby captures iconic bars, hotels and destinations including Parker Palm Springs, Petersham Nurseries, Liberty London and the San Domenico Palace hotel in Taormina, Sicily – setting for The White Lotus. (HarperCollins, €34.12).
Villa Cetinale: Memoir of a House in Tuscany by Ned Lambton is a must for those who dream of owning a Tuscan villa. Lambton inherited his 17th-century estate outside Siena from his father. After a major refurbishment, the interiors were masterminded by decorator Camilla Guinness. Foreword by John Pawson and photographs by Simon Upton. (Rizzoli,€65).
HAUTE HOMES
Sense of Place: Design Inspired by Where We Live, Caitlin Flemming and Julie Goebel, Abrams, €40.
Livable Luxe, Brigitte Romanek, Abrams, €32.
Karl Lagerfeld: A Life In Houses, Marie Kalt and Patrick Mauries, Thames & Hudson, €97.
