HOW YOUR TREE REVEALS YOUR CLASS
So are YOUR baubles proper posh – or just a teeny bit naff?
WITH its huge sparkly bows and glitter-coated branches, football WAG Coleen Rooney’s glitzy Christmas tree this year speaks volumes about her lifestyle. But don’t the festive
sam Taylor says: The question is not just why Coleen Rooney created this gaudy, jumble of oversized bows and glitter, but how she found the time? My own attempt to emulate the ultimate WAG tree took six hours, and that didn’t include the two days spent finding bows big enough to cause an eclipse. Perhaps the wives of millionaire footballers have tree decor assistants.
Thomas Blaikie says: This has gone horribly wrong. Is it a Christmas tree or a wedding dress? Ribbon on a tree is rather naff, as are flowers. Less is definitely more when it comes to Christmas trees. decorating habits of all of us reveal the same — our Tree Tribe, if you like? Here, SAM TAYLOR recreates some popular looks, while etiquette expert THOMAS BLAIKIE gives his verdict.
TREE TRIBE: You are an all-tweeting, selfie-taking, instagraming lazy bones (basically, you’re anyone under 30 years old, living in a flat).
EXPECT TO SPEND: £20.
sam says: ‘Pop-up’ now applies to everything from restaurants to tents. It’s the here now, gone tomorrow culture, designed for the Twitter generation who are too busy for actual sentences.
Argos (who else?) has now produced the ‘ pop-up’ Christmas tree, with sewn-on baubles, which takes less than 30 seconds to spring up.
Thomas says: This would suit the sort of person who sends out Christmas e-cards and who will be glued to their phone on Christmas Day. It’s a very loud ‘can’t-be-bothered, I-don’t-do-Christmas’ statement.
TREE TRIBE: Resolutely middle-class, a la Kate Winslet and Jane Asher. EXPECT TO SPEND: £100-£150
sam says: I was on safe, middle- class mum ground here: drag the fake tree from John Lewis down from the loft, along with the ageing box of stringy tinsel and dismembered baubles, then add chocolate decorations.
As my husband struggles to find which faulty bulb is derailing the fairy lights, I perform emergency surgery on the 25-yearold angel — where are her legs? Add some sentimental decorations made by the children while in nursery school and voila! A lovely mismatched family offering.
Thomas says: Tinsel’s not quite the thing, but children love it, so allowances can be made. Your baubles are a little big but at least you’ve not committed the vulgarity of buying new each year. White lights are right; never coloured or flashing. And the bashed-up angel is absolutely perfect.
TREE TRIBE: You are determinedly upwardly-mobile middle class (think Carole Middleton and Elizabeth Hurley).
EXPECT TO SPEND: £500. sam says: For the socially aspirational, determined to be the poshest person in the close, there can be only one tree: a lofty Norwegian Spruce (none of this sensible five-footer nonsense). The Duchess of Cambridge, chose a locally-grown 9ft specimen for her Norfolk home, Anmer Hall. She also picked out reels of gold gauze on a recent trip to a garden centre, perhaps following this year’s on-trend colour theme of using only metallic and copper baubles and lights.
Unlike true toffs, who would never buy anything new for the tree (decorations, like furniture and jewels are always inherited), these socially aspirational decorations will be thrown away on the 12th day to make way for even bigger, and better, baubles next year. But I flinched at the £500 cost — the same as the average European minibreak. Thomas says: ‘A Norwegian Spruce is just right, with wide spaces between the branches, and the decoration is restrained. But to be truly posh, your tree should be like your drawing room: nothing matching. And decorations really should be family hand-me-downs, not new.
TREE TRIBE: You are unashamedly lower middle class (just like the Moffatt family from TV’s Gogglebox)
EXPECT TO SPEND: £40 sam says: Any mother who lived through the Disney Frozen years will recognise this tree. Brilliant white, fibre-optic plastic and groaning with baubles featuring the images of the film’s heroines, Anna and Elsa.
When I put it up, it was a case of standing back and waiting for the starstruck stream of young girls to rush forward and start screaming: ‘I want one!’ Be warned. Thomas says: You’ll get a lot of mockery for this. I don’t mind it. Vulgarity’s all right when it’s shameless.
TREE TRIBE: Metropolitan elitist class (artist Damien Hirst, designer Kelly Hoppen or Vogue editor Anna Wintour). EXPECT TO SPEND: £50.
sam says: Never mind minimalist, this is the ‘Bah, Humbug!’ of Christmas trees. Most of the half an hour it took me to construct was given to artistically arranging the ‘branches’. It also comes with some very subtle built-in lights. To try and cheer it (and me) up, I hung five red baubles on its branches. But really, there is only one place for this tree and its not by the fireplace, it’s in the fireplace.
Thomas says: Is the owner of this tree a Communist? Do they have no sense of fun and flamboyance? This little twig is nasty, skimpy and pointless. Expect the most severe social condemnation if you display it.