If you’re a sentient human with a pulse and a debit card, it’s only natural that when the holidays roll around, you’ll want to give your loved ones a gift or two—and you won’t have the slightest clue where to start.
A simple problem to solve, right? Wrong. Within the last couple of years, gift guides—those candylands of search engine optimization that used to be relegated to online publications looking to squeeze out a last drop of end-of-year revenue—have morphed into universes unto themselves that are dedicated almost entirely to personal branding exercises for the already rich and famous. And it’s an exercise that has made shopping even more dizzying for us little people.
According to Deloitte, which began analyzing the holiday shopping period in 1985, the isolation accelerated by the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic caused visits to holiday e-commerce sites like Wirecutter and Strategist to balloon by 690 percent in 2020. Purchases of luxury goods also exploded during that time; apparently faced with the possibility of impending death, ordinary people were keen to buy fantasy items, and they were looking for guidance. These trends have persisted, and the logic of the gift guide has morphed to meet those consumer needs—celebrities, our avatars of fantasy, have colonized the gift guide, and are ready and waiting to guide us to the mothership: their home pages.
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For an example of a classical gift guide of yore, consider, if you will, this mildly disheveled list from Vanity Fair dating back to (gasp) 2012. A pair of Sanborn Canoe Artisan Painted Paddles, $140 each. Or run down the beach with a Fredericks and Mae kite, $64. The list is a snooze, but it’s totally manageable.
And if you’ll allow a further digression before we get to the modern celebrity madness, gift guides still, to some extent, represent the long-standing symbiotic relationships between magazines and brands that keep Thanksgiving dinners on everyone’s oak dining room tables. Advantageous product placement in gift guides make our favorite magazines look sophisticated. And in addition to making money for upscale rags via an affiliated link or two, there might be an outright sponsorship deal taking place between the brand hawking a coffee pot in a magazine, and the magazine itself.
The celebs have long since wanted in on this. And although it’s not like celebrity-centric gift guides are a phenomenon that emerged out of nowhere this year, 2023’s offerings are on a whole different level.
An example that The Daily Beast believes fully encapsulates the impenetrable mess made of gift guides in 2023—a miasma of personal branding, e-commerce, branded content, and the phenomena of an online publication bravely attempting something editorially unique—is the SSENSE x Julia Fox Gift Guide, published Nov. 13 and entitled “It’s Giving Winter.”
SSENSE had Fox, a fashion superstar who just published an excellent new memoir, pen an intro for her guide and select a series of favorite designer Vivienne Westwood socks, Piera Bochner candles, Wales Bonner pants, and other items—none of which are searchable, but you can try and click on something you like as it scrolls by in a Fox News-like chyron.
There are also several flow charts, like the “shopping emergency flowchart” and the “price-to-intimacy matrix,” which are supposed to match your gift recipient to an appropriate item. For example, the site suggests a Thom Browne cardigan for someone who watches Succession (a bit vague, but apt) and Margiela gloves if you happen to be buying a present for a total stranger.
This totally bonkers SSENSE gift guide, as outré as it seems, is completely representative of almost every guide available today. Websites—editorially independent, celebrity-centric, or otherwise—have basically given up on making any kind of central sense and are just throwing shit at the wall, hoping you’ll snap up stuff because you’ve gone as crazy as the people selling it. It’s kind of a delight!
“Every day is a holiday, to be honest,” Fox, starting with a bang, writes in her SSENSE intro. “I enjoy just being left alone and not really having too many obligations. In that way, I think that it’s also a time to be selfish. But I’m a big gifter. I always get thoughtful gifts.” She rambles on endearingly from there.
Meanwhile, on TaylorSwift.com, the pop star’s gift guide is broken down into six different categories: Fleece + Sweaters, Collectible Vinyl, Holiday Ornaments, Tour, Holidays at Home, and Jewelry. With Swift, it’s hard to tell where her Holiday Collection ends and her “regular” merch store begins, so vast is her collection of branded offerings. (Swift’s boyfriend, NFL star Travis Kelce, doesn’t have his own gift guide… yet, but Kelce and his fellow NFL star brother did just release their own novelty holiday song that hit No. 1 on the charts, so really, it’s only a matter of time.)
You’d think a Gen Z superstar as edgy as Billie Eilish would forgo something as lame as Christmas merch entirely, but nope; even the “Bad Guy” singer is susceptible to the call of Q4 commerce. Every single item from her limited-edition Christmas drop gift guide, including Billie hand warmers and Billie cookie cutters, is sold out.
And what would Christmas be, truly, without a Mariah Carey Naughty and Nice pajama set? Or a Mariah Carey Season hoodie? Truly, for the person who wrote “All I Want for Christmas is You,” it is her season at this point.
The exception that proves the rule—the one gift guide this year that isn’t crazy enough—is, shockingly, the 2023 GOOP Gift Guide for Men. It’s a rare miss for the platform, because Gwyneth Paltrow is, of course, such a reliable source of aspirational product fodder.
The problem with Paltrow’s manly picks this year is that they’re too dull. Forget the Rolex Daytona and the tartan pajama pants, GP. Those are played-out as hell. For 2024, point the boys toward what they deserve: the most sophisticated, gold-plated Fleshlights money can buy.
