Have yourself a very selfie Christmas!
Your face on a cupcake? Your name on your knickers? LIZ JONES (in the me-shirt) on the stocking filler phenomenon that has YOUR name on it...
IT FEELS rather like the scene in Citizen Kane when Orson Welles, haunted and tearful, enters a hall of mirrors and is confronted by images of his ageing self, stretching to infinity. The worst moment for me is opening a box of cupcakes – surely the most clichéd, overpriced culinary gift of the past five years? – to see my visage realised in icing sugar, melting and moving south like lava in the heat of the photographic studio. They illustrate exactly what will happen to my face should I ever decide to give up Botox.
Now, there’s a gift any woman would love this festive season. Forget that Wham!-esque T-shirt bearing my year of birth, the kind of present an exspouse would only give after a particularly bitter divorce.
But my face on a chocolate cupcake? Seriously? Oh dear. This is getting too self-obsessed for words.
My Wellesian nightmare is down to the big gifting trend this Christmas. Called rather unappealingly ‘co-creative retailing’, it’s all about plastering your loved one’s face or name on just about anything and everything, from knickers, identity bracelets, artwork and clothing. You can even place your mug on... well, a mug. It is an extension of the me, me, me culture, the glacé cherry on the Christmas cake of the selfie, the ultimate homage to oneself.
A sickly, self-centred idea, of course, but not really new. The Duke of Windsor liked to have ‘WE are too’ stamped on everything from luggage to bath mats, denoting ‘Wallis and Edward are too in love’.
The biggest exponent of the product personalisation trend this year is Selfridges department store, with more than 50 gifts you can make your mark on. For £60,000, you can have an Anya Hindmarch clutch engraved with a name or personal message. Let’s hope the recipient doesn’t leave the top off her Biro in this little number.
The store’s runaway bestseller so far, with more than 70,000 sold, is a personalised jar of Nutella, priced at a far more reasonable £3.99.
Of course, there is one major drawback to the whole co-creative retailing trend: it’s hard to recycle your gifts by giving them to whoever turns up unexpectedly on St Stephen’s Day.
1 YOUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED I felt like George Michael in a Wham!-like white personalised Eleven Paris Back Number T-shirt (£35 at Selfridges). I mean, what woman would want her year of birth in huge numbers emblazoned across her chest? ME ME ME RATING
2 CHRISTMAS WRAPPING I do like a scarf with a monogram. A pink and grey Alphabet Scarf (£10 at matalan.co.uk) is soft and discreet with its single ‘L’. I also like Johnstons of Elgin Tartan version (from £40 at Selfridges) and Burberry’s Heritage scarf (€395 at ie.burberry.com). ME ME ME RATING
3 A MUG’S GAME! No one wants a personalised mug, like Dipinto’s photo ones (£12 each at Amazon Local) and the bright yellow Little Miss Jones Boxed Mug (£19.99 at Selfridges). They are so smug, like wielding a huge engagement ring, or having your wedding photos displayed on the piano. ME ME ME RATING
4 A NUTTY IDEA Hmmm, yes, I can see why if you are six you might like a personalised Nutella jar (£3.99 at Selfridges) – as long as you don’t have a nut allergy. But if my boyfriend arrived with a jar of this on Christmas Eve, I would shout: ‘You are trying to make me fat!’ ME ME ME RATING
5 LIZ IN WONDERLAND! I will cherish this personalised classic novel, called Liz’s Adventures In Wonderland (€21.50 at firebox.com) – it is a lovely thought. But the point of fiction for me is to be transported away from my barren lifestyle, and to imagine I am someone else. Children should stop being encouraged to be self-obsessed. ME ME ME RATING