A Treasury Of… Minneapolis Fashion and Interior Design Blog

St. Nick must’ve sent a team of his elves to Mumbai this past year to set-up a satellite workshop in order to stuff my 2011 stocking. Cause he ended up leaving me a stash of beautiful Indian treasures this Christmas, like this nano-sized pill box and citrus-scented soap.

And this sparkling vintage cricket ball!

My household Santa rejected this box of Elephant brand noodles as an “official” Christmas present, so I was handed it, unwrapped/unceremoniously, early on the 24th as a reject gift. But its packaging was so cheery and charming, it’s earned “official” status in my heart.

I don’t drink soda pops all that much anymore, but I still have a super strong sweet tooth for unique, extinct, or international soft drink (bottles). We’ll see what this CocaCola branded, coconut water-colored Limca goes down like.

After departing India, Santa’s sleigh must’ve stopped in England somewhere along his journey to my house to pick up this vintage postcard book featuring the small town in England in which I was born. Although it was a gift for me, it was my Mom and Dad who most enjoyed flipping through the photographic reminders of the first place they called home as husband and wife.

Santa didn’t forget to Buy American this year though, and these Thurmoc Slippers from Hickorees are not only puppy belly-soft, inside and out, but they’re packaged in the greatest, grandfather-ish box.

Kris, Kelly, and Sabrina showed up on Christmas too…

With a 34-year old piece of gum and a sticker of Kris on one of her earliest cases.

Petrified, deadstock chewing gum is quickly becoming the hipster sweet of the year, if no other blog’s told you so just yet.

There’s nothing novel about even the rarest bottle of cologne – not compared to these scented Spanish towelettes.

Combining extracts of Lemon, Bergamot, Geranium and Eucalyptus, swiftly refreshing your personal space with one of these Agua de Colonia packets during your holiday travels would instantly make any dreary layover or traffic jam as spiffy and spruced-up as a Mr. Ripley thriller.

And now, the very best present for last!

An original 8 x 10 promo photo from 1990 of Audrey Horne brooding in the halls of Twin Peaks High School the morning the blue body washes up, and everything starts to change.

And so with that, on to a new year!

Two years ago, I felt I had to meticulously photograph all of my Christmas gifts before I could properly use or enjoy any of them. And out of that sudden, strong urge I launched The Treasury just a few days later.

The way I see it, there’s no point in something being delightful unless it’s dutifully documented.

My yuletide tradition continues for a third year. I present to you (and, really, to myself) a selection of the Christmas gifts I was lucky enough to have given and received this happy, holiday season.

1. Vintage French Workbooks.

2. Rogues Gallery Key Fob.

3. Gem-like Game Dice.

4. Bandit Boy Screen Print.

5. Retro-Perfect Stabilo Pens.

6. Not Chocolate-Covered Cherries, but Chocolate-Flavored Cherries!

7. Vintage Book on Style.

8. Made-In-America Robin’s Egg Colored Duct Tape.

More and more it’s the little things – the ones that typically show up in my stocking – that give me the biggest smiles at Christmas.

Sadly, I already sent off my list o’ wishes to Santa and his many elves this past weekend, so it’s too late for me to hope St. Nick will stock my stuffing with any of these re-printed military pamphlets from WWII this Christmas.

At under 10 bucks a pop, they’re cool and classic for either getting or gifting, packed with wartime wisdom (possibly) worth remembering today.

From what’s sure to be the best of the bunch, the 1944 Germany Manual: “Don’t be too ready to listen to stories told by attractive women. They may be acting under orders.”

Even today, in our lives of relative peace, that’s an arch little instruction worth following still.

I’ve been treasuring away for over a year now and I can’t believe I never posted about this book before. My sister gave it to me as a gift a few years back, and really I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t enjoy receiving a copy.

“First published in 1924 this delicious book is a peek at life in England between the wars, and is a useful mini-encyclopedia, filled with games, recipes, bird-spotting information, first-aid instructions, and random, often wacky trivia. Learn the proper way to kiss in the ocean, eat mice, play ‘Human Sacrifice’ and more.”

Flipping through my copy, I imagine getting holed up at some countryside cottage for months on end, my only source of amusement and information, my Week-End Book. Stocked with miscellaneous sonnets, tips on etiquette, maps of the stars, and retro tips for preparing tinned British foods, the days and weeks would ripple rapidly away.

It’s a true Swiss Army Knife of a book – there’s even a checkers ‘n chess board and a ruler printed on its inside cover.

My copy states that the publisher intended to update the book with all new content for 2006. Looking online, it doesn’t appear that that ever happened. But I did find its re-printed sister book, The Week-End Problems Book, which is set to arrive in the post tomorrow!

Before it’s totally untimely: the final remnants of my much-adored Christmas Stocking.

1. Chinese New Year Kit. The gold bars say Hell Bank on them. Anyone know what that’s all about?

2. Flowery, fragile sesame cookies. Crunchy, crumbly, crave-worthy.

3. A rainbow’s worth of macaroon-like soaps.

4. And a bin of macaroon-colored Taro wafers.

(Everything on Earth reminds me of macaroons these days.)

Last Christmas was the first year I specifically gifted myself a treat (my Russian Lomo LC-A film camera). It wasn’t a ritual I had specifically intended to turn into an annual holiday tradition, but after recently re-posting my year-long fascination with the Beams Plus work oxfords, I wound up indulging myself in a fancy, foreign find for the second Christmas in a row.

Like practically everything worth wanting these days, men’s fashion-wise, my Beams had been trapped in Japan, for what I thought would be forever. But Treasury reader Vadim K. commented that a proxy such as JapanGoodsFinder.com could make my Beams Dreams come true. (For a not-small fee.)

So on Saturday December 19th I submitted an inquiry about my shoes. The next morning a brief, polite e-mail was in my in-box as well as a PayPal invoice which tacked on about 25 percent of the shoe’s regular retail price. Hmmm….

I agonized over whether it all was worth it, and if I had requested the best size, and wondering what I would do if my shoes didn’t fit. But by the afternoon of Sunday December 20th, I pulled the trigger via PayPal and less than four days later, on Christmas Eve, my shoes arrived fresh from the Beams shop in Harajuku. (Packages from J. Crew take longer than that!)

I waited until after Christmas to unbox my risky gift to myself. I didn’t want the possibility of them not fitting to fowl up my holiday. But everything turned out perfect. My dweeby oxfords looked just like I’d dreamed they would, fitting roomy and right. I can’t wait to lace ‘em up properly and poke around like Pete Martell.

Many thanks to Japan Goods Finder and to regular reader, Vadim K!

Gold and silver and other metallic-ized gifts.

1. Postalco Jotter Notebook.
I had really needed this as all year I had been scribbling phone numbers and directions on a stupid stocking stuffer from last year: a box of little loose (and easily lost) sheets of paper printed with a light orange graphic of man climbing a cliff or jumping over a river or something (I’ve blocked the beyond-dumbness from my memory) and the words “The will to succeed.” (Yesterday I easily mustered the will to successfully toss them in the trash!)

2. My dog Aesop looks like a fox, so thus this door-knocker looks like my dog.

3. My mother gave me the vintage spoon, along with a story: When we moved from England back to America when I was nine months old, the movers had accidentally packed up my baby spoon and my mom was in a panic about how she was going to feed me during our week long sea voyage back to the states. She said every restaurant in England had these little silver spoons in the standard brown sugar tins set on each table. So she guiltlessly stole one with which to feed me at sea. Flash forward 30 some years and she comes across the spoon somehow in my sister’s kitchen and steals the spoon (once again!) and gives it to me for Christmas.

4. Ultra-chunky pretend nails, perfect only for laying around looking pretty.

5. Another vintage English gift, though not stolen. A stamp sheet cover from the 1940s. Trying to figure out how/where to display it as it doesn’t really fit modern American stamp books.

6. A hunk of Brazilian pyrite now giving gritty glam to the top of a stack of books.

With all these shining, sparkling gifts, my digs are one big disco ball!

I don’t hear that much about Alternative Apparel on the boy blogs, and I’m not sure why. Not to be confused with American Apparel (and it’s hard NOT to get confused what with their super similar brand names, penny-pinchy pricepoints, and certain design elements of their respective websites) Alternative Apparel skips the geeky sleaze of the AmAp aesthetic for something earthier and more earnest.

Alternative Apparel incorporates recycled and organic materials, the use of low-impact dyes, and energy conservation in its manufacturing facilities for an eco-conscious line of simple, sportswear basics. Which is totally, totally great, but only half as great as their sweatshirts look and feel.

Their Champ Longsleeve Eco-Fleece Raglan comes in five heathered shades. Their slim yet somehow boxy fit and their cotton/poly blend create a convincingly vintage looking piece, as if left over from a late 60′s Ivy League athletics office.

I stumbled across an eco-grey one last spring and requested an eco-red one for Christmas (…and am having a hard time not jumping overboard and netting myself an eco-blue one too).

Topping the rare, retro appeal of even their long sleeve raglan, Alternative Apparel also offers a short sleeve version! That Steve McQueen in ’69 shape is especially hard to find in ’09 and will spring up in my warmer weather wardrobe in at least one shade.

For certain.

Due to the particulars of my personal life, “Santa” stuffs my stocking three times each Christmas. The stocking I traditionally dig through last each year is always the best one. Void of flat filler like Dilbert desk calendars or uninspired drugstore deodorant, my final stocking of the season always overflows with treasures vintage, exotic, or branded beautifully. Some of this year’s top-performing stuffers:

1. Indian Salted Pumpkin Seeds.

2. Mexican Bingo Boards & Cards.

3. New Mr. Goodbar bars in old-fashioned wrappers.

4. A zoo’s worth of Cracker Jack creatures in red and wintery blue.

Because of a big-ticket item that was given to me back in November as my early, main Christmas present, most of my December 25th gifts were all tiny and thrifty stocking stuffers, actually. But I didn’t mind at all, and my materialistic core didn’t even really notice the absence of splurgy goods, believe it or not. All the small-ticket treasures in my sparkly stocking brought me huge heaps of giant-sized joy.

…I’m gonna keep that in mind at Christmas next year.

I had intended to share my own Holiday Wish List here, just as many Treasury readers so graciously had done over the past few weeks, but December never ends up large or long enough to fit in all we want to do with it – does it?

But maybe that was for the best.

Because I’d like to take a moment to sweetly (re)state that one of the original intentions of this Treasury was to shift the energy of a materialism-based blog away from what was desired and toward what was treasured. Away from the emptiness of wanting things toward the energy of enjoying things.

It’s not easy to do this. Not easy, especially, for me to do this.

And, arguably, it’s not money that makes the world go round, it’s wanting things that makes the world go round. I like sharing what I want, I like just as much hearing what you want and wanting things leads to creativity and hard work and pleasure and a myriad of non-shallow, non-evil pleasures.

But in this season of riches, in our privileged world in which we troll down glowing screens on thousand dollar machines to cherry-pick from a forest of fashiony blogs all the pretty things we swear we need, I just wanted to remember part of the original purpose behind my Treasury. And to non-naggingly remind myself and my far-off friends to appreciate and value and treasure all we each have – now, already, and inherently. Because there are many in this world who are not so lucky to live in the luxury that we cherry-pickers do.

Okay. So, instead of my Holiday Wish List, over the coming days I’ll post my Gifted List and share what, now that Christmas 2009 has passed, the things I am now lucky enough to actually have! I promise to slowly savor each and every item on this list before I start salivating over anything newer and seemingly shinier.

So here goes.

1. Gravel – A Man’s Cologne

Somewhere down the rabbit hole of blogs this fall, I learned about this singular scent. Created in Germany in 1957 and offered at only one retail location in each city in which it’s available, each bottle is anchored with a seabed of pebbles inside which dissolve slowly over the years, lending the cologne a salty, silty, sailor-like hit.

A scent’s actual…um, scent sometimes has little to do with why I step under its splashy haze. Often times simply its name, and thus the time and era it transports me to is the crux of its intoxication. Other times, like a shimmery sculpture, its the fragrance’s bottle that seduces – demanding to displayed as a dresser-top objet d’art.

With Gravel cologne, its these attractions plus its “sweat ‘n cocktails at a cliffside campfire” scent that set me into a spritzy-fit. Everything about it is just so awesomely outré.