London Trawling | Katie Grand’s Treasure Hunt

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Katie Grand, the stylist’s stylist and editor of the eagerly anticipated new magazine called Love, is all about her friends. So when she decided to hold a tea and treasure hunt, she turned to David Waddington, a co-owner of London’s pop-up restaurant FLASH, for the site. Waddington is also a close friend of Grand’s best friend and fellow attendee Giles Deacon — all three were college pals. This is how Grand rolls. And in typical Grand style, the treasure hunt — M.C.’d by the gender-bending performance artist Jonny Woo — featured finds by Marc Jacobs, YSL, Burberry and Prada.

What Gives | Gifting the Foodie

The editors of T Magazine present What Gives, a guide to holiday gifting.

__________

This olive wood nutcracker puts a new twist on a Christmas classic. And who doesn’t love waffles? The Uno Villaware waffle maker delivers crisp Belgium-style deliciousness.

Olivewood nutcracker, $14.50. Available at For Small Hands.

UNO Round Belgian Waffler, $59.95. Available at Sur la Table.

Need more gift ideas? Read previous posts of What Gives.

The Moment’s Gift Guide Guide

Coal is Cool — a selection of affordable items found in recession-sensitive gift guides.

Nervous consumers aren’t the only ones counting pennies this holiday season — nervous luxury magazine editors are too. Open up any December issue and you’ll find glossy pages brimming with (mostly) recession-conscious gift ideas. Not bad for a change. In an effort to help you navigate all these economically-correct shopping features, The Moment proudly presents its Gift Guide Guide. Safety in numbers!

Soft Serve | Bespoke Ferraris, Floating Beds, Boar Hunting

Soft Serve scans newspapers, magazines and Web sites for “soft news” — coverage of products, trends and matters of style. Just the fluff, ma’am.

Now girls and boys can go wild on Spring Break without taking their clothes off. Florida is now the capital of “warm weather, sunshine, and wild boar” … These days, flying is full of surprises. A Canadian man went down on one knee when security personnel made him reveal an engagement ring that he had hidden in a sock… Here’s a novel honeymoon idea — London’s new M-hotel, a mobile prefab hotel…

Valentine’s Day | I Love You [This Much]

Say it with chocolate this Valentine’s Day. How much you say is up to you.

From top: Maglio chocolate-covered figs,
One Lucky Duck truffles, fleur de sel
caramels from Recchiuti Confections.

First date: Chocolate-covered edamame from Trader Joe’s for the weird factor. $3.99, at Trader Joe’s.

Third date: Dark chocolate-covered fleur de sel caramels from Recchiuti Confections for the salty explosion factor. $22, at Recchiuti, or Dean & Deluca.

Almost moved in: Maglio’s chocolate-covered figs in a pretty wooden box, great for storing condoms and/or CDs. $51.95, at Formaggio Kitchen, or in the Essex Street Market.

Office husband: Mini-pyramid of single-origin chocolates from Pralus to share while complaining at tea time. $9.99, at Murray’s Cheese, or go to Amazon.

Just engaged: Just over a pound of chocolate truffles from La Maison du Chocolat. $92. For locations, visit: Lamaisonduchocolat.

Another year, another sampler: And now, for something completely different: raw chocolate truffles from UliMana, $15.95, at Tasteraw.

Soft Serve | A News Feed of Light Reading

Soft Serve scans newspapers, magazines and Web sites for “soft news” — coverage of products, trends and matters of style. Just the fluff, ma’am.

You can’t deny that the Italians are serious about playing dress-up. Starting next Friday the Hilton Molino Stucky in Venice will offer its guests a costume consultant to put them in period garb for Carnival 2008. … At the Carter Hotel in New York (located about three blocks from The Moment’s headquarters), the amenities aren’t Hilton deluxe. You might find a dead body under its bug-infested beds. TripAdvisor has just named it the dirtiest hotel in the country. … And speaking of gross … to wash off the grodiness of a flea-bag hotel, let’s turn to Andrew Goetz, a partner in the chi-chi soap brand Malin+Goetz. His personal-cleanser pick: a bar of Neutrogena. Oops! … There’s more good advice on Short Shrifted, a fashion blog for short men. It’s not a joke. …

Survival of the Chicest | the Shoehorn

I always travel with a shoehorn.

Anyone who flew over the holidays was surely reminded of the myriad annoyances of airport security — the lines, the surly TSA workers, the folks who just can’t figure it out. (People, those pictographs aren’t hard: the laptop comes out, no swords allowed!). The one thing I still just can’t get over is the forced removal of shoes. Sure, I know why we need to do it, but there’s just something so pathetic looking about a bunch of fully-dressed adults shuffling around in their socks (or worse: bare feet). At any rate, I now never leave home without stashing a shoehorn in my tote. When everyone else is frantically stuffing themselves back into their shoes (and punishing them in the process), I’m swiftly sliding into my Lobbs. Fastidious, you say? Maybe, but it works. My own travel shoehorn is an ultra-utilitarian chrome model I picked up who knows where years ago, but if you’re in the market, there’s always this one from Ralph Lauren online. It looks nice and it’s on sale for $21.

—Nathan Lump, Travel Editor, T Magazine

Tell us your best airport strategy.

Taking Inventory | Holiday Gifts

In the days leading up to Christmas, The Moment published holiday wish lists of several T Magazine staffers. Now that the big day has come and gone, we’re curious to know what loot they actually received. Here’s an update from the senior designer Elizabeth Spiridakis, who was hoping for a vintage Ray Gun magazine, a Miu Miu dress and wooden dice by Geoff McFetridge. She writes:

As for what I got from my wish list — oh, of course not. Nothing. My Christmas was good, but I never get any supermajor gifts.

From my sis: Jonathan Adler’s sunglass case. Because my sunglasses look just like its needlepoint design — they’re shaped like perfect circles, and I am collecting them obsessively. Elton John chic.

Holiday Gifts | Editor’s List (Day Six)

Over the past few days, the T staff have shared their material desires. Friends and family: take note! (Gift lists from earlier in the week can be found here.)

Judith Puckett-Rinella, Senior Photography Editor

• Stella McCartney beaded clogs, Spring collection.
  “They are little works of art. I am from Kansas so I have always had a thing for Native American bead work. They remind me of the Wichita Indians’ hand-crafted adornments. These shoes are like a little slice of home for the holidays.”
• A custom picture-plated furniture piece by Joe Heidecker.
  “Heidecker had a photo booth at Design Miami. You could take a portrait of yourself and he incorporated it into a work of art/design in a matter of minutes. He was constructing them on site. The console was my favorite.”
• A Nadav Kander’s photograph, “Yangtze, The Long River Chongqing XI.”
  “I’d love an extremely large-scale print of Kander’s new body of work from China called “Yangtze, The Long River Chongqing XI.” His work takes me to another place completely. This image is both eerie and mystic; it captures in a single moment all that is happening in China. The two ends of the bridge will meet in the middle, but somehow it still leaves a hole in your heart.”

Happy Holidays | Video Greetings From Andy Spade

In celebration of the season, T commissioned several artists to create short films on the theme of “giving.” The final video to arrive is “How Much to Go to the trees?” Story by Andy Spade, the founder of the Jack Spade men’s line; directed by Red Bucket Films.

“How Much to Go to the Trees?”
“Fargo” meets “Miracle on 34th Street” as two city kids go in search of the Real Spirit of Christmas. The film begins with the two boys heading out to find a “real” Christmas tree because their father is a devotee of minimalist design and has no appreciation for the old-school tradition of displaying a furfir tree. The boys’ adventure takes them in a cab upstate.