Inside Man: ‘My top tips for holiday souvenir shoppers? Seek out local designers, and step away from the dreamcatchers’
London is emptying out, the Out Of Offices are going on and the lucky among us are heading off on hols. Some are beach bums, some love a foodie trip, but for me, holidays are all about seeking out exotic treasures I can’t find at home.
However, holiday shopping can be touch and go. Even top tastemakers are liable to find themselves heatcrazed about being on foreign soil and discover they’ve left that carefully honed sense of style at Heathrow.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve got home, opened my suitcase and realised my new finds have travelled about as well as the cheap retsina that tastes so crisp on a Greek island and so much like paint stripper in a London basement flat.
A tan should have been all I brought back from the Italian trip instead of a set of acid green collapsible cups and five dreamcatchers.
But that’s not to say that all holiday purchases are bad — for every dreamcatcher, there’s a wrought-iron candelabra or hand-blown Venetian glass tumbler. I find the best buys happen when I’ve done research into great local stores or makers and don’t let myself get carried away by my holiday persona. Most successful souvenir sprees start at a local market. They give a real flavour of the local culture and the types of thing that are readily available. They also usually offer the best bang for your buck.
My next tip is to stick to regional specialities. Are you in Normandy? Then seek out the gorgeous French linen. In Venice, it’s Murano glass.
Seek out local artisans and try to visit them in their studios if possible. Buying direct is probably cheaper, and you never know: it might even be worth a few quid in years to come.
There are some items, however, that transcend location and can be great wherever you are in the world. If, like me, you can’t go to the beach without filling your pockets with treasures, why not put your finds to good use? (Although don’t pick them up in places where the ecological balance is particularly delicate.)
You might have a Linda Barker-shape alarm going off in your head about now but I’m not necessarily advising you to tie a shell to your bathroom light cord unless that’s really your jam. No, I take my inspiration from grottoes, those shell-encrusted pavilions beloved of 18th and 19th-century aristocrats. It’s a doozy to DIY, all you need to do is stick a load of shells to an old bit of furniture and then varnish it. It rocks! (Sorry.)
