Gifts for fashion girlies.

You’re reading This Heaven Gives Me Migraine, a shopping newsletter about searching for lasting pleasures in a world of disposable garbage. This month, we’re rounding up gift ideas five at a time, each centered around a theme.

Surprise, surprise—I was only going to be able to hold off on talking about fashion for so long.

This particular gift guide probably requires no preamble, but—have you met me?—I’m going to do one anyway. I’ll try to keep it short. Ish.

It’s hard, sometimes, to buy clothes for people. You have to contend with sizing, which can be a bit of a minefield unless you know the person very very well (and understand that sizing across brands is, in this the year of our lord 2024, an absolute mindfuck designed to drive you and everyone you love to madness). But if you’re up for the challenge, there are a couple reasons it’s worth it.

• Fashion is your insides on your outsides. (If you know what I am quoting…let’s just move on. I am not gaining any street cred from this particular reference.) What we choose to wear indicates what type of person we want to project. So, when you gift someone something that fits their aesthetic, you are, in perhaps a uniquely penetrating way, saying: I see you. On the other hand…
• Fashion is also aspirational... Which means it’s entirely likely that your gift not only says “this is who you are,” but also, “this is who I see you as.” This makes it possible to give someone a gift that is also a compliment. I still recall very fondly a long, chunky, dramatic striped winter scarf my mom bought me when I was a freshman in high school, at a time where (as one may readily expect) my sense of self was murky and precarious. It felt like a very cosmopolitan accessory to me at the time, and so receiving it was a vote of confidence that I could a) pull it off and b) be the type of cosmopolitan person who should wear such a thing. (I eventually lost it—high school, amirite?—but the message still stands!)
• …but most people need to treat it as a utility. At the end of the day, we all need to put on clothes so we can go about our lives and not get arrested. And with the aforementioned fuckery of sizing, multiplied by the fuckery of quality (more on this, to the exhaustion of everyone on this list, at a much later date), it’s no mystery why many of our closets are filled with stuff that’s just “sufficient”. It gets us clothed, it counts as decently appropriate for the situations we find ourselves in, and some of it even works relatively well for us (until it gets all screwed up in the wash). But it’s not great. It’s not beloved. Because, frankly, who has the time to fall in love with everything we buy? So: gifting clothing gives us (the gifter) the opportunity to take some emotional labor off of our giftee’s plate. We will find something we think you will truly love, and wear for decades to come. Because you deserve that. You’ve just been manipulated by the mass market into thinking it’s impossible.

Okay. Onto the gifts.

1) Near-custom winterwear, for a sensible cost: Cornelia James lined leather gloves (from $174)
If you thought that my sizing gripes were limited to “why buying pants sucks now,” think again. Mass-market sizing has also ruined gloves. Let me be clear: YOU ARE NOT A SM/MED OR A MED/LG. You are a special, unique human with a million distinct measurements—and so is everyone on your gifting list this season.

Cornelia James understands this, and that is why they offer six glove sizes, to say nothing of their array of customization options. (I used to recommend *truly* bespoke, made-to-measure gloves from Fitzgerald Morrell, but their website now sports a very saddening message about being on hiatus due to lack of available skilled glovemakers in the UK. But go ahead and sign up for their email list anyway and hope that someday they will come back. You see? This is why we need to support the little shops we love.)

Cornelia James has been around since 1946. (They were the official glovemaker to the Queen, RIP.) They offer a relatively wide selection of gloves, ranging from “occasion” (wedding, opera, moments of extreme extra-ness) to more utility-driven (but still beautiful) winter gloves. While I’m certainly prone to bouts of extra-ness, I think their leather gloves make for the best gift. They’re from super-supple sheep leather, and are lined in (depending on the style) silk or cashmere. They’re designed to last a long time, which is not only the most sustainable way to buy stuff, but also is a key attribute for a gift since your giftee will think of you whenever they pull on their perfectly-fitted, ultra-chic and cozy cashmere-lined gloves before heading out into the winter weather. (Winter is a time full of simply “bearing it”—so the small pleasures of something warm and beautiful can really have an outsized effect on our demeanors. We must take our joys where we can get them.)

It cannot be overstated how much better it is to wear a pair of gloves that truly fits you. You won’t be tempted to karate-chop the leathery expanse between your fingers, because it’ll already be where it’s meant to be. You won’t be plunged into sensory hell by the floppy, unfilled point of a too-long middle finger. You won’t feel the strangely infuriating confinement of your palm, driving you to flex those muscles compulsively like you’re auditioning for Matthew Macfayden’s role in Pride and Prejudice.

What will you do instead? Probably take a lot of tasteful tabletop photos of your gloved hands looking dainty at an outdoor cafe.

A quick note on ordering these for other people: Cornelia James has a helpful guide to measuring, but that process isn’t exactly a covert operation—so they’ve included a estimation chart based on your giftee’s heigh at the bottom of the page. HOWEVER, this is not an exact science, and the whole point of this recommendation is to give gloves that really fit like, well, a glove. So if you’re at all in doubt, this is one of those rare moments where I’d advise giving a gift card. These are real, IRL cards—not emails—sent in a nice envelope, and yes, you can still get them from the UK in time for Christmas.

2) A statement piece that doesn’t sacrifice quality: HADES Blondie Parallel Lines knit ($297)

HADES knits are incredible. I already own two, and I have been on a war-path to acquire this one as my third for over a year. As a brand, HADES proves that you do not have to choose between novelty and quality. They are SO well-made: handcrafted in Scotland from 100% lambswool sourced from a family-run mill in Yorkshire, England. “100% wool” means different things to different people, depending on where you shop and the quality of the wool, so let me say: this is the non-itchy stuff. It’s mid-weight (easy to tuck into the waistband of your trousers or skirt to “crop” the look) but not flimsy—truly warm, but layerable under a true-to-size jacket. In other words, it’s the platonic ideal of a sweater: endlessly comforting, endlessly versatile. I’ve literally slept in mine before.

What more can I say to convince you? From their site: “Clothes have the potential to enrich and improve our lives, in order for them to do this we must begin again to appreciate how they are made, who makes them and the materials that they are made from.” Swoon. There’s a Tilda Swinton Collab! Paul Mescal is a fan! If you’re not on board by now, I’m sorry, there’s no saving you.

A lot of things on the site are currently out-of-stock because it’s the holidays, but I recommend any of their products without reservation (including, if you’re lucky enough to find them, second-hand: a couple archival letter sweaters can be found here, and one lucky buyer can snag a Sonic Youth sweater here.) And FWIW, they make Men’s sizing as well and would be a very smart band tee upgrade for a dude in your life. (Or buy one for yourself—gender is a construct.)

Not sure why this list is skewing so UK-heavy currently, but here we are, so: HADES’ international delivery cutoff is Friday, December 20th.

3) An upgrade for your “BFF” charm: MLE Gentlewoman’s Agreement necklace in gold ($128)

Finally! Something that doesn’t require you to guess sizing!

Emily Li Mandri, the brilliant mind behind MLE (get it?) is a certified Fashion Girlie by all the metrics that matter. (She also graduated from my alma mater a few years before me and was nice enough to help me out on a nonprofit fashion show my Junior year, so I’ve been dreamily following her trajectory from afar for over a decade now.)

Her shop is full of the kinds of highly-specific-but-not-exclusionary items that immediately call to mind someone in your life—the francophile colleague; the “bow girl” sister-in-law; the claw-clip obsessed niece. A lot of the items are just plain fun and would make excellent stocking stuffers. But the Gentlewoman’s Agreement necklace takes the whimsy of the brand in a thrilling direction: empowering, emboldening, strong.

This is the type of gift that instantly becomes a signature piece. It’s subtle enough to wear anywhere, but it will never become commonplace. Its satisfying magnetic hand-clasp serves as a constant reminder of your friendship, support—even solidarity. I think it’s a perfect gift for your ride-or-die best friend and confidant—a grown-ass-woman upgrade to replace that old set of matching “BFF” necklaces you got from Claire’s. (There’s also a 14k gold version if you’re *really* good friends.)

4) A fashion girlie right of passage: Lauren Manoogian Horizontal Beret in ecru ($160)
I first found out about Lauren Manoogian when I was working for Ralph Lauren the summer after college. I was an eComm product description copywriter, which meant that literally hundreds of thousands of dollars of cashmere and wool knitwear would be dumped on my desk every day so I could touch it, look at it, (try not to sweat on it,) and write about it. Lauren Manoogian’s small capsule collection for Club Monaco was a buzzy addition to the holiday gift edit, and it was easy to see why. Even as the cable knits, scarves, turtlenecks and cashmere water bottle covers (true story) all began to blend together, Manoogian’s work stood out—it had an artful imperfection to it, a heft, what we would call “a hand”. Which made sense, because much (if not all) of it was hand-knit.

For that reason, it was also easily three times the price of everything else in the knitwear edit.

Manoogian has retained her same sensibility since her pieces first came across my desk in 2013. The yarns are special and tactile, with fluffy alpaca bringing luxurious loft to many of them. The shapes are architectural, yet soft, maybe owing to her time studying at RISD. One gets the impression from her collection that there is perhaps a small collective of women living somewhere in the world wearing only Lauren Manoogian—and that they are all impossibly interesting.

This beret is a nice way to experiment with what makes this collection so magnetic. It’s hand-loomed in a continuous shape, so it’s seamless, and it’s what the brand calls a micro-boucle, giving it a bit more texture than is apparent at first glance. The silhouette is timeless—the beret is a fashion signifier for a reason—but feels somehow modern, new.

Perhaps most importantly, it gives fashion girlies what they *really* want this year (and every year): to look like Joni Mitchell on the cover of Hejira.

5) An elevated staple they’ll eventually buy in triplicate: Buck Mason Featherweight silk cashmere turtleneck ($188)

The rest of this list (and my life) to the contrary, sometimes “simple” really is better. This silk, cashmere, and merino wool layering piece is sort of the fashion equivalent of that Flaubert quote: Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work. Except that, in this case, it’s more like “be sensible and timeless in your base layers so you can be wild and original in the rest of your outfit.”

I’ll spare you all from opining on the merits of “elevated basics.” Every brand on the planet, whether they verifiably offer “elevated basics” or not, has already done that job for me.

What I’ll say instead is that Buck Mason isn’t as indistinguishable from these other brands as their minimalist typography might first lead you to believe. Buck Mason offers a very tight collection of trend-averse staples for men and women, some of which (but not all—always read the details) are made at their own Buck Mason knitting mill in Pennsylvania. They seem appropriately preoccupied with doing one thing and doing it well—which, in their case, means looking at how people used to do it and trying to get as close to that as possible. They do not offer discounts or coupon codes. What you pay at this time of year is what you’ll pay any other time of year. (I respect it.)

This turtleneck is one of those rare gifts that it’s practically impossible to go wrong with. People with a highly developed sense of fashion will appreciate its fabric content and close-to-the-skin silhouette for all the layering opportunities they offer; people who take a passive stance on personal style will find it goes with practically everything. There’s not a lot of “one size fits all” messaging in these here parts, but this is an exceptionally good gift for someone who you don’t know extremely well but are expected to be thoughtful about. Consider this my “utility pick” for the season. It’s only gonna get weirder and more alienating from here!

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this—or, maybe especially, if you purchased anything from this list—let me know. Looking for a gift for someone in particular (or an elite pick in a given product category)? Drop us a line and we’ll try to help you out. I don’t have affiliate links because I’m not a Real Person yet, so you can feel confident my recommendations are genuine. See you next time for 5 more gifts around another theme. Peace.