The best Christmas gifts this year are not the loudest ones. A hand-blown wine glass, a candle poured into recycled clay, a kit that turns silver clay into a real ring, an incense cone shaped like a droplet: none of these need a bow to make an impression. Here are four gifts we are actually giving this year, and why each one earns its spot under the tree. You can also read our latest editor’s picks, such as our top 5 gender-neutral perfume.
Christmas will arrive before you know it, believe it or not! And now is the time to start shopping for those must-have gifts if you want to be recognized as the best gift-giver this holiday season (I mean, who doesn’t?). Because, to be really honest, that title doesn’t result from putting off your Christmas shopping, buying a last-minute gift, or choosing an uninspired, generic gift. Nope! That honour goes to individuals who genuinely take the time to look for creative and original Christmas presents for their loved ones.
But because we know how difficult it can be, especially during the holiday season (therefore, start now! You are already late! We’ve put together a list of unique Christmas gift suggestions that aren’t just a cheesy mug, an ugly Christmas sweater or a pair of socks. We’ve come up with luxury choices for your loved ones, ranging from $50 to $350!
Actually, you could use these presents for almost any occasion, including birthdays and anniversaries. You’ll discover a list of unusual Christmas presents that everyone on your list, from your best friend to your mum, would appreciate down below. I’m just saying, with all these gift suggestions on your side… Take notes, Santa.
Editor’s Picks
1. Josephinenhütte Wine Glasses
This is where luxury can really be felt. Buying wine glasses as a gift sounds almost too practical to feel special, until you have actually held a Josephinenhütte. Designed by Kurt Josef Zalto, a sixth-generation Austrian glassmaker whose family has worked in glass since the 18th century, the Josephine collection is built around what Zalto calls “the shape of taste”: an intentionally pinched, almost too-thin silhouette that lets a wine’s aroma unfold in a way sturdier glasses simply cannot. Wine people call it the glass with the kink, and once you notice the bend in the bowl, you cannot unsee it.
Zalto is not a new name in wine circles. He designed a now-famous glass collection back in 2000 before parting ways with that company in 2009, then spent a decade developing Josephinenhütte as an independent project, reviving a Silesian glassworks that dates back to 1842. Every glass is mouth-blown, and the line covers white, red, universal, champagne, and water, along with matching decanters and carafes. A single Josephine glass runs €68, and gift-ready sets start around €250, which is real money for stemware, but not unreasonable for something that is genuinely handmade and will outlast most of what else is under the tree. If you want to gift someone a better wine habit rather than another bottle, this is how you do it.
2. Harriet Allure Candle
Harriet Allure was started by two childhood friends, Freddy Mackensy and Alex Adu, who grew up together in Germany with roots in Ghana and found themselves scattered across different cities as adults. The candles came out of that distance: a way to make a new apartment feel like home fast, using scent instead of furniture. The brand’s four fragrances, Ama, Faiyaz, Minuit, and Tartu, are each named after someone in the founders’ lives, and each one is poured into an amorphous, hand-finished clay vessel made in Portugal, no two exactly alike. Once the wax burns down, the vessel becomes a cup or a container, so nothing gets thrown away.
At $85 to $90 each, these are not impulse-buy candles, but the raw materials come from Grasse, the actual capital of French perfumery, and it shows in how the scents develop over a burn rather than smelling the same from the first light to the last. Give one to someone who has moved recently, who lives far from where they grew up, or who just needs their apartment to smell less like a place they are passing through. That is exactly the person this brand was built for.
3. The Droplet Co Scent Diffuser
Forget the incense cones for a second. Droplet’s real gift this year is the Scent Amplifier, a cordless diffuser that looks like it wandered out of a hi-fi shop rather than a candle aisle: a walnut-toned wooden base, a hand-blown crystal glass vessel on top shaped like a vintage light bulb, and a single oxidized silver dial that does all the work. Turn it on and the base gives off a warm, tungsten-toned glow while the device pushes pressurized air through neat fragrance oil, breaking it into micro-particles instead of relying on heat or water. The result is a scent that reaches the room exactly as it was composed, not thinned out by a diffuser stick or scorched off by a candle wick.
The mechanics back up the design. It diffuses for three minutes, rests for two, and repeats, so a room gets a steady presence instead of one overwhelming blast. Four to six drops cover an average-sized space, a 10ml bottle lasts around a month, and a full USB-C charge keeps it running cordless for up to fifteen hours, which means it can move from the living room to the bedroom without ever needing a wall outlet nearby. The six fragrance oils that pair with it, from fig leaf and cedarwood to wild berry and bergamot, were developed in Grasse and are all vegan and cruelty-free, with a full refill taking under a minute and leaving no residue behind.
Nothing else on the market treats scent with this much precision, or looks this good doing it. If you are buying for someone who already owns too many candles and has started eyeing hi-fi equipment instead, this is the gift that finally makes sense of both instincts at once.
4. The Lila Lobster Jewelry DIY
Most craft kits under the tree get opened, tried once, and forgotten in a drawer by February. The Lila Lobster’s silver clay kits are built to survive past the holidays because the payoff is real: what starts as a soft, moldable clay comes out of a small butane torch as 99.9% fine silver, an actual precious metal you can wear. The brand’s Starter Kit (£249) comes with everything needed to shape, texture, and fire a first piece, gemstones included, while the Mini Kit (£89) is a lower-stakes way in for someone who has never touched a torch in their life.
What makes this a better gift than a generic craft box is the education built around it. The Lila Lobster’s founder built the brand out of an Instagram following, naming pieces after the people who inspired them and treating customers more like a community than a customer list, and that same spirit carries into the tutorials that come with each kit. Give this to someone who says they are not creative. They usually are, they just have not been handed the right material yet.
5. Carolina Levinton Ceramics
Carolina Levinton’s first design ended up inside buildings rather than homes. Before ceramics, she co-patented a system of lightweight slabs filled with plastic spheres, which have since multiplied by the millions in building structures around the world. The Argentine industrial designer, ceramist and painter now works from Barcelona, designing and producing handmade pieces, and every item in her online shop is unique. Her ceramics mix wheel-thrown and hand-built techniques, and the work draws on wabi-sabi, so the marks left by her hands are kept on purpose. Her vases come in organic shapes with matte finishes in beige, eggshell, cobalt blue and cocoa brown.
Carolina is an Argentina’s industrial designer, ceramist, and painter. Her products are unique handmade ceramics and paintings from Barcelona.
6. Gold Trip Jewelry
Gold Trip launched in London in 2021 on a simple idea: good jewellery shouldn’t need a special occasion or a second mortgage. Every piece is hallmarked 925 sterling silver, plated in rhodium (so the silver won’t scratch or tarnish), 18ct gold or 18ct rose gold. Many are finished with freshwater pearls, enamel or semi-precious stones.
The designs are minimal, the kind you forget you’re wearing until someone asks where it’s from. The brand belongs to Buy Women Built, a platform that champions female entrepreneurs, and to The Company of Master Jewellers. Everything also arrives in recyclable gift packaging, which spares you the wrapping aisle on December 23rd. You’ll find it at goldtrip.co or in more than 40 stores across the UK, Ireland and North America.
More Choices
7. Slate Body Gel
Most of us buy body wash the way we buy paper towels: on autopilot, whichever one is on sale. SLATE Body would like a word. The award-winning brand makes four washes for four moods, and the full set is the gift. DAWN is for early starts, with guava and green tea plus a sharp hit of fresh grass and mandarin. DUSK is the evening one (cucumber, jojoba, jasmine, lotus).
MOVE uses charcoal and willow bark to clear away post-gym sweat, and sea salt and lime to wake you up. PLAY is the going-out wash, and it smells of pomegranate, pistachio and buttercream, so basically dessert. Each one comes with its own playlist, and the bottles are good-looking enough to leave on display. For the person who has everything, a shower wardrobe is probably the one thing they’re missing.
8. The Smooth Company Hair Care
Gifting a hairbrush and a styling cream sounds like something you grab at the pharmacy on the way to a party, until you see what a good slick back actually looks like at the end of a long day. The Dream Duo pairs two of The Smooth Company’s best sellers: A cream and a brush. The cream is made with 90% natural-origin ingredients, including argan oil, pro-vitamin B5 and glycerin, and hydrates and conditions while giving flexible, touchable hold. Founder Áine Kennedy describes its texture as what you would get if hair gel and a hair mask had a baby. The brush is the real conversation piece: billed as the first curved slick-back brush, it has a curved handle that follows the shape of your head so every strand gets captured, and once you have used it for a sleek bun, a flat paddle brush feels like the wrong tool entirely.
