When I look around my home and take inventory of the items that make me happy, I find that my favorite objects have one commonality – they are either things that have an inherent beauty to them or they make the mundane moments seem noteworthy. Often times, it’s a combination of both. Below, I curated a list of 10 gift ideas that I hope will also bring joy to your gift recipient’s life by elevating everyday moments.

Glassware has become one of my love languages and Juliska was really the brand that started it for me. The relationships we share with the objects we hold dear are very personal but for me, beautiful glassware with really special details – like the “prunt” droplets on this set – help my intention to pause and notice the little things, even when I’m just sipping a glass of water. So essential in this day and age where we always seem to go, go, go. If you know someone who also likes to romanticize their everyday routines, this set is made for them.

This sculptural vase is what air would look like in glass form; its name is Latin for air or vapor. Designed by Gabriel Tan for Audo Copenhagen, the vase makes even just a few poetic stems look like a still life painting. It’s a perfect gift for your friend who notices beauty anywhere they go.

“Enjoys collecting cocktail napkins” was not on my bingo card and yet, here we are. I don’t know exactly why they spark so much joy for me, but they do! It’s just another layer of adding beauty to everyday life. I love the pastel color pairings and golden embroidery on this particular set. It would make a fun little gift for your friend who loves throwing parties and throwing them often.

Another case for charming glassware – this time for the wine lovers! The fun part about this gift is you can pick out all six pieces. Curate a rainbow of colors, do half and half, or choose just one color. The possibilities are endless and sure to delight your recipient whichever way you decide.

I’ve been a long time fan of Skagerak and now they’ve joined forces with one of our favorite Danish design brands, Fritz Hansen! While I tend to love matching sets, this is one case where I vouch for getting one of each (teak and oak) to upgrade your common salt and pepper grinders.

To understand why these Faba bags, named after everyone’s favorite broad bean, are so special, you’ll need to check out Lindquist’s Instagram Story highlights. Each one is painstakingly made by hand and each step – using a sewing machine to make each stitch, puncturing the lock cut-out, smoothing and finishing the edges, adding the final (and highly satisfying) quick release pull snap, and more – is done by an actual human who really puts a ton of love into each bag. Gifting one of these is really like gifting a work of art.

I know, shelves aren’t a typical holiday gift but if someone really special to you has a unique collection, whether it be ceramic cups, little tchotchkes from around the world, or miniature chair models, these Sætter shelves would be a beautiful way to recognize that love for collecting and display it.

These days, I enjoy the slow release of caffeine via the bright and grassy taste of matcha over coffee. I’ve perfected my personal drink (a latte, made with a splash of Minor Figures oat milk and a homemade cascara simple syrup) but trying new brands and cultivars of matcha leaves room for fun and exploration, which is how I think most tea drinkers feel! If you know one, this set has everything they need, including a bamboo whisk (made by a Japanese company led by a 25th generation whisk maker), a blown glass whisk stand, an artisan-made sifter, a measuring spoon, and a tin of single cultivar Gokou matcha from Uji, Japan.

I thought I was done collecting luggage when I bought my Away sets, but then I had kids and traveling became my equivalent of a marathon race. Not only do you have more to pack but you also have to consider toddlers in transit: sometimes cooperative, other times unwilling to walk another step through security. This MiaMily carry on is game-changing because it’s designed with a backrest that easily flips up to convert your luggage into a ride-along for kids! A seat belt keeps them secured and an integrated hook is handy for those travel backpacks full of games and snacks. Don’t have kids? The suitcase can support adults up to ~220 lbs, providing you a seat away from those crowded rows while you wait for your plane. Putting the “fun” in “functional,” MiaMily would be a great gift for travelers young and old.

I professed my love for Ossa in an earlier Take 5 but also think this would be such a fun gift for friends or coworkers, especially since these phone chains start at $35! Ossa is making phone accessories cool again but in a more elevated way, with real baroque pearls or jade beads. There’s a style for everyone, whether your recipient prefers chunky metal, punchy fruits, or minimalist black.

Follow along so you don’t miss any of our 2023 Gift Guides this year!

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As the Senior Contributing Editor, Vy Yang is obsessed with discovering ways to live well + with intention through design. She’s probably sharing what she finds over on Instagram stories. You can also find her at vytranyang.com.

New Order of Fashion provides emerging fashion designers with a platform, material expertise, research support, and a well-equipped atelier, empowering them to accelerate a just transition to a fully circular fashion and textile industry. “We are fortifying the groundwork for a brighter future,” they say. “This entails an alternative fashion system that benefits our planet and humanity as a whole.” Their exhibition for Dutch Design Week 2023 was entitled Regeneration: Fashion From The Ground Up and explored what regeneration looks like in the fashion context through three lenses: Earth Care, People Care, and Fair Share.

Earth Care included contributions that approach the earth as a living, breathing entity and practices that promote environmental biodiversity – nurturing the living soil. The first piece, The Healing Lace, by Royal College of Art graduate Katerina Knight, is an impossibly delicate needle-lace dress made from three varieties of lavender, that she grew on her own allotment and harvested over two summers.

Katerina spent more than 250 hours hand threading each dried and preserved seed of lavender onto silk and linen. “The relationship between growing and sewing is deeply intertwined. Both are incredibly nurturing when you invest patience and time,” she says. “None of the techniques I now work with I believe to be technically demanding or highly innovative per se. But what they do demand of me is time. Perhaps an entity in today’s accelerated society we take for granted.”

Fifth-year Aalto University fashion student Ruusa Vuori trained in classical ballet and contemporary dance before an injury forced a change in direction. “Clothing can expand or reduce the experience of personal space, form a shell or invite in, open or close, draw boundaries or break them,” she says. “The work emphasizes sensory aspects and the sensitivity to embodied experience developed through my background in dancing.”

“I believe that when things are destroyed and exhausted, the vitality that bursts out of them is infinite,” says Ju Bao of his collection Annihilation. “I have always been obsessed with the washed and destroyed effects of denim. The longer the wearing time, the richer the texture will be.” He uses knitting techniques to create an illusion of worn denim, avoiding the artificial washing and destroying processes used by manufacturers, making this “ruined romance more sustainable.”

Regenerative Folklore is a collection by Spanish Andalusian designer and Central Saint Martins knitwear graduate Silvia Acién Parrilla. Using techniques she learned from her grandmother, she makes garments from pineapple and nettle-certified organic yarns, and hand dyes them with a blend of natural dyes sourced from bacteria and invasive plants in collaboration with fellow CSM graduate Xue Chen.

“With each stitch, I am not just creating a garment, but a symbol of my connection to my ancestors, my community, and the earth,” she says. “Through my collection, I aim to inspire a deeper appreciation for the natural world and the importance of preserving our heritage for future generations.”

Helsinki-based artist and designer Priss Niinikoski has a background in fashion and textiles but has shifted her focus to explore sculpture, three-dimensional textiles, and spatial design. As part of an artistic research residency, New Order of Fashion commissioned Priss to explore the potential of floral waste. “I chose to extract fibers from leftovers such as the cutting waste and unsalable cut flowers which I gathered from flower shops,” she says. “I used the outer layer of [rose] stems, which I peeled several times to reveal a translucent layer with a flexible nature for further processing. From the gathered fibers I twined by hand a thin cordage with some water to give more elasticity.”

“My idea of regeneration extends to the tangible and the non-physical,” says Jude Hinojosa. “I create menswear from a non-binary perspective. My pieces offer alternative choices in the traditional by embracing masculinity’s emotional side.” Jude uses upcycled menswear as the foundation of their collections, revamping them to offer choice, familiarity, and comfort, and embodying the “softness, beauty, and desire for expression” that is a less often seen part of masculinity. “It’s the mustard seed of change,” they say.

The next part of the exhibition was entitled People Care and explored a focus on non-material wellbeing as a route to creating systems that meet human needs and support social equity and community resilience. CSM graduate Ivan Delogu (top image) presents different aspects of womanhood in his work to showcase the diversity and complexity in women’s experiences in Sardinia – both throughout history and today. While Tales Told in Tangles (above) Icelandic designer Ása Bríet Brattaberg builds on craft skills passed down from her grandmothers to “re-weave memories from the past.” The piece in the exhibition has been woven with a zero waste weaving technique from Icelandic wool and old shirts that belonged to her late grandfather. “I can still remember him sitting by the kitchen table in the sky blue shirt,” she says. “I was making a memory tangible.”

The Fair Share portion of the exhibition explored the use of resources in ways that are equitable to both people – both present and future generations – and to the planet, using “less” as a starting point. Moving Pigment (above) is part of Charlotte Werth’s ongoing research into co-designing textile patterns with pigment-producing bacteria. “It intends to enlarge and make visible a reality that is usually hidden from sight, showing us the incredible beauty of this parallel microscopic world,” she says.

Vót’tetèsj (“back pocket of a pair of trousers”) explores Bastiaan Reijnen’s Limburgian family heritage, by combining the essence in quality of workwear and handwork with the aim of creating a new category of luxury clothing that will last for a lifetime. “Even if the final garments are imperfect or wear out, there will be a sense of pride and joy in repairing them,” he says. “These handmade qualities give life and character to the garments that can’t be reproduced.”

Usually we weave fabric and then make fabric into clothes, but Kelly Konings is pioneering “whole garment weaving” in her project Hybrid Forms of Dressing. “I’ve created 2D jacquard woven textiles that hold the possibility of being worn as 3D garments,” she says. “Draped and folded onto the body, these whole-garment woven textiles urge the viewer to rethink the interdependent relationship between a textile and a garment.”

Photography by Katie Treggiden.

Katie Treggiden is a purpose-driven journalist, author and, podcaster championing a circular approach to design – because Planet Earth needs better stories. She is also the founder and director of Making Design Circular, a program and membership community for designer-makers who want to join the circular economy. With 20 years’ experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, Crafts Magazine and Monocle24 – as well as being Editor at Large for Design Milk. She is currently exploring the question ‘can craft save the world?’ through an emerging body of work that includes her fifth book, Wasted: When Trash Becomes Treasure (Ludion, 2020), and a podcast, Circular with Katie Treggiden.

Let us preface that we wholeheartedly believe the Apple Watch offers, in all its flavors, the best holistic smartwatch experience for most people. There’s a reason you see more Apple Watches on wrists than any brand by far, haters be damned. Now that’s out of the way: WOW. The announcement of a $69 CMF Watch Pro smartwatch from Nothing’s budget-friendly accessories sub-brand CMF has us wondering whether some viable competition may be arising from the ground floor up. It’s literally about time.

At a glance, the CMF Watch Pro looks like a chunkier and less polished, if not handsomely executed, Apple Watch lookalike. It’s sleek and minimalist, with rounded corners finished with chamfered edges around its aluminum alloy case, obviously more than inspired by Apple.

The watch’s graphic user interface seems like a Shein version of watchOS, sharing some interesting simplified similarities, communicated by the brand’s characteristically red, black, white, and gray color scheme to a pleasing if a bit pedestrian unified degree (better less than more).

The smartwatch’s always on 1.96-inch OLED display offers 410 x 502 resolution, more than Apple Series 9 45mm model’s 396 by 484 specs. Unlike Apple, these watches are a bit dim – and dimwitted – in comparison, with a 600+ nits brightness rating versus Apple Series 9’s always-on 2,000 nits (3,000 with the Ultra 2) and definitely not as performance capable as the newly updated Apple silicon-powered S9 watch. Measured against those devices its cribbed from, the CMF Watch Pro will undoubtedly fall well short in every metric beyond total resolution.

What the CMF watch sacrifices in performance, it does seem to deliver in the basics department proficiently: built-in GPS, health tracking features, custom dial designs, and IP68 water resistance. Donning one onto the wrist, a wearer can tap into 110 sports modes, allowing for heart rate, blood oxygen, sleep, and daily steps analytics. You can also accept calls, control an Android or iPhone phone’s camera remotely, find your phone or watch, and use the watch face as a miniature flashlight, as is par for the course these days. Again, all the basics one expects of any smartwatch today.

Oh, but did we mention the CMF Watch Pro supposedly delivers up to 13 days of typical use between charges, with up to 45 days in power saving mode or 27 hours with GPS always on? This is the one shining benefit of a basics-only smartwatch with the display turned down to “3”. But the idea of owning any smartwatch with this size OLED delivering anywhere in the ballpark of a week’s worth of use between charges makes the $69 wearable a tempting proposition. 

It’s as if Nothing’s CMF Watch Pro team distilled the most necessary and common uses of someone’s  smartwatch and baked them all into their version, cutting corners in capabilities and extended features, and limiting updates to the brand’s own CMF Watch app.

Even with these major limitations, if the CMF Watch Pro can deliver in fit, finish, and sensors accuracy anywhere in the ballpark of a simply “good” experience, this smartwatch might turn out to become a tempting entry point for those seeking a smart – but nowhere smartest – timepiece.

Learn more about the CMF Watch Pro and its availability over at intl.cmf.tech.

Gregory Han is a Senior Editor at Design Milk. A Los Angeles native with a profound love and curiosity for design, hiking, tide pools, and road trips, a selection of his adventures and musings can be found at gregoryhan.com.