Thoughtful Gems and Pearls of Wisdom

Browsing online can actually gift you a huge amount of choice and variety on classic and more unorthodox gifts. As they are just click away, you don’t have to –thankfully – join the herd of shoppers on the high street. If you’re going for innovation then, online shopping can help you think outside the box.

Don’t be afraid to try something new and take a gamble. The most adventurous presents can be the ones that are the most memorable – for the right reasons. Consider buying something that will get the recipient doing something a little left-field perhaps. Asda have just included hot air balloon rides to its array of gifts. It’s a wild choice, it'll certainly add a little punch to a present. They’ll ascend over the part of the English countryside they choose, and land just in time for you to take them off for a lavish breakfast.

For something on a smaller scale, check out Asda’s gift department for a range of slightly less extravagant gifts, but with just as much sentiment. Buying books for a recipient is a great idea and Asda has a list of top best sellers. There’s the windswept romance of Mills and Boon for fans of embellished romance as well as celebrity autobiographies and some classic poets like Ted Hughes and Philip Larkin.

You may be surprised by the luxurious-style of presents you can find online and it’s all nicely mixed up so you can look around clothes, jewellery, flowers and even home decor all on one site. A website like Not on the High Street has lots of ideas for wedding or birthday gifts. They do extravagant jewellery by independent boutique-style designers, cashmere jumpers, pashminas, evening bags, and even garden furniture.

The beauty of browsing online is that you’ll find what you were looking for and then more. Many designers offer their boutique designs to websites, so the variety is rich. It’s a stress-free way of shopping, with the magic appeal of being able to shop until you drop from the comfort of your own home.

Those going to San Francisco did it, and children have it right when they sit making daisy chains - flowers make divine accessories for the hair and can work very well as jewellery.

Flowers in many ways are like fruit – decorative, bursting with colour, fragrant and good for you. They are Mother Nature’s prettiest accessory. Women who wear flowers are confident, fun, and altogether glamorous. Think of seasonal flowers as trends that come and go, as styles to make your signature, like perfume.

 For the spring, pick from a fruity selection: apple blossom and cherry blossom and honeysuckle come into fashion. Daffodils, with their sunny disposition are planted so that they show their pretty faces and lilacs are also a lovely symbol of new life; 1940s women often wore a lilac on the lapels of their pelt and flowers do make a vibrant touch to an outfit. The post-modern twist to a little ‘lilac on the fur’ is most notably shown by Sex and the City’s Carrie Bradshaw. Her extravagant fashion sense included an over-sized corsage that bounced along the city slicker streets of New York, becoming that staple part of the Fashionista’s wardrobe, like a new string of pearls...

Summer which (hopefully) will creep upon us over the next few months brings a new ‘range’ all very sweet-smelling. The classic rose, freesia, fuchsia, gardenias, sweet peas and the potent jasmine are all in the throes of exotic full-bloom. Slipping one behind your ear or planting one in the chic-backcombed chignon creates connotations of desirable Senortias hanging in the porches of Mexico. Or you could look like Carmen Miranda, a little lady with a larger-than life image bursting with va-va-voom. For the more demure, turn to the late, great and beautiful Billie Holiday, who wore the summer gardenia in her hair, all-year-round, making it her signature image on and off stage.

Dried, pressed flowers too can make a pretty pin. My grandmother – the chicest woman I know, and aptly named Violet – had flowers dried and   compressed in brooches that she wore with her Sunday best.

Finding all these flowers is easier said than done. Often, the most accesible flower shops are those by the station selling depressed looking carnations and tulips. These do not a glamour puss make. Try Interflora for ease and simple browsing, and flower delivery. Their flowers come in bunches, but the perk here is that you can leave the gardenias in a pretty vase and pluck a bloom as you leave for your party. Alternatively, Wild at Heart sells rare and single stems, that aren’t cheap, but the selections are varied.

 

The summer isn’t far off, which means that a few garden parties should be on the way. Although there is no obligation, turning up to party empty-handed probably isn’t the best idea and bringing a present to hand over to your hosts - even just a bottle of good wine - is polite and thoughtful. If you want to arrive at the party with something a little more personal yet still very tasteful then think about these sweet gestures.

Nothing says it more simply than a beautiful bunch of flowers. As the weather gets warmer, think about a fragrant bouquet as a gift. Dendrobium Orchids are particularly good this time of year and available in all sorts of exotic colours. They also have a potent scent and can even make natural hair accessories, slip one in an up-do for that senorita-style look. Gardenias also have a lovely fragrance and a white blossom that suits the light summer months. Check out Interflora for different types of flowers and bouquets that you can order online and have delivered to your door, or to their party.

 

 

Why not present something luxurious like an elegant evening bag for your hostess. The pages of fashion magazines have been selling sparkles for seasons, and a sequinned clutch bag or purse would be a glamorous addition to any summer frock and flatter the recipient. Have a look at Not on the High Street, for sophisticated evening bags, and other accessories. Or if it’s her birthday, be inspired by a range of birthday gifts, perhaps an unusual piece of jewellery or a silk pashmina would go down well, especially on a cool summer evening.

If you feel more comfortable bringing food to an event like a garden party then you should probably keep it light, but indulgent. Some delicious cupcakes should be a great idea and fit in with a garden tea-party theme well. For real indulgence and innovation, check out Selfridges Food Hall - not only do they sell a range of cakes, but also some seasonal iced biscuits. For spring, their gift-box has biscuits iced with a rainbow of colours all made up like miniature handbags. You can even buy made-to-look real chocolate shoes, which should certainly bring a smile to any party and make excellent treats for guests.

 

 

The history of perfume is centuries old and has long gone hand-in-hand with sultry charm. The original definition of the word comes from the Latin word, smoke. To wear a fragrance is to mask the senses in fumes, to beguile and intoxicate. Even in the after-life, perfume played a big part for Egyptians. Ancient tombs have been discovered with jewel-encrusted bottles filled with scents and powders – when the soul was released to heaven, relatives saw to it that it was presented as a perfumed gift.

The earliest traces of perfume start with the elaborate Egyptians, who painted and preened with the very best. No figure in Egyptian history represents the power of perfume better than Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt. This vixen demanded that wherever she went, her servants doused and clouded the air with perfume, hailing her arrival as Queen and seductress. She even set out to seduce the great Mark Anthony on a ship of perfumed sails. The label Tocca were so enamoured of Cleopatra’s reputation that they named a perfume after the Grande-Dame, acknowledging her as a key player in perfume’s history.

Nowadays, things haven’t changed too much. Women sprinkle on scent to glam it up on a night out, making it the icing-on-the-cake of their pampering routine. Women realise the power of perfume and those that can afford to – the rich and famous - create scents under their name. Wayne Rooney’s loveable fiancée Coleen Mclouglin, has her own perfume as does Jennifer Lopez, Kylie Minogue and Kate Moss - it’s certainly the trendy thing to do.

Men’s fragrances show flashes of this trend too and campaigns are often fronted by a fashionable celebrity male, like Dunhill’s Jude Law. Some male stars like footballer David Beckham go down the route of creating their own signature scent and being their own model and spokesperson, showing how the power of perfume has placed itself firmly into a male market. For that reason, men are represented well by perfume companies, with a whole range of men’s perfume stocked up on shelves and glamorised in fashionable campaigns. Dunhill and Hugo Boss perfume both boast a designer fragrance for the modern or traditional male.

New perfume is always being launched – this season sees the return of Escada, with a new fragrance for hazy summer nights called Escada Moonsparkle that comes – Egyptian Style – in a rather lavish looking purple bottle and the previosuly mentioned Boss, unleashing an icy glass bottle. Perfumes get more varied and the bottles more decorative as time goes on. Today there are a host of fragrances in sparkling bottles helping you to announce your arrival in a cloud of perfumed smoke.

 

To be a real starlet and follow the trend of Hollywood glamour-girls of the past, you have to indulge in a luxurious signature scent: it’ll speak waves and volumes about you. A designer perfume leaves your stamp on the world and is an elegant way of stepping into womanhood. You only have to look at the women linked to perfume to see the significant role it plays in reinforcing the notion of glamour. Marilyn Monroe famously declared that she would wear nothing in bed but her Chanel No. 5, and Jacqueline Bisset was so attached to her scent that it appeared on her dressing table in the film Day and Night.

Perfume dresses a woman as much as an evening gown does, in fact many actress from 1950s Hollywood had perfume specifically made for them, like Fleurs de Thé Rose Bulgare, for Ava Gardner and Interdit by Givenchy for Audrey Hepburn.

  An enticing designer perfume like Escada or Chanel – both having dressed the ladies of the red carpet in gowns for years - should take a centre stage in your cosmetic bag, which is incomplete without your lipstick, rouge and perfume. You can bet that no glamour girl would leave home without their signature scent. If you don’t fancy lugging whole glass bottles to the beach or on a night out, here’s a tip: collect your free perfume samples at the beauty counter and keep a selection in your handbag. That way you can glide around in any sweaty nightclub still smelling of roses.

If you’re feeling that your looks are lagging by the end of the night and need a revamp, tie your hair up. Apply another coat of mascara and spritz your décolletage with something like the Esacada MoonSparkle and shimmer back onto the dance floor a new woman. Men too don’t need to neglect their glamorous side, nor do they need to panic that it’s just-for-girls. You only need to look at Hollywood men to see how slick and sweet-smelling they were, and are. Ladies man Cary Grant opted for Sélection Verte, and hip, hot actors gave been selected to front campaign. Jonathan Rhys Meyers is one of the faces behind Hugo Boss perfume, and Jude Law can be seen smouldering for Dunhill. Okay, so all the lads out there might not want to take out their free perfume sample to the local club, but they should add a touch of glamour to a night by putting a little Dunhill aftershave behind the ears – a glamorous lady out there is bound to appreciate it.