Grace Coddington, Terry Jones, and others on crafting homemade gifts for friends and loved ones
Eden Loweth.
“My gift is for my late father; he passed away when I was two, and recently I discovered his diaries whilst clearing our family attic during lockdown. Within one of the diaries was an extract of a French song by Petula Clarke from 1966. I haven’t been able to stop listening to it since and the lyrics are personally reflective to parts of my own life’s journey. I’ve also enclosed an image of myself now, as my father died when I was young I felt it poignant to include an image of the person I’ve become.”
Terry and Tricia Jones, founders of i-D magazine
Terry & Tricia Jones.
“Tricia loves to have flowers in the house, and now after 50 years of being rubbish [at] remembering to regularly visit the florist, I’ve learnt to make my own arrangements. Cutting flowers by the season from our garden that had no color a year ago, when we moved from the city to our converted barn in the West Country, is very satisfying—and as assistant to our garden’s creative director—it’s a present to see her beautiful smile! Now it’s the reward from last year’s planting.”
Charles Jeffery.
“This is a gift for my dear flatmate, Emma Shepherd who I have lived with for 4-5 years, we now live in a really beautiful flat in East London. I’m deciding to give her this gift as she’s been there for me, through the good times and bad and always offers me great advice when I’m stuck or down.”
Erdem Moralıoğlu.
“This is a photo of a rose that has grown in my garden in Hackney during lockdown and my hand!! I am sending it to my friend in LA as I miss her!!!”
Grace Coddington, creative director
Grace Coddington.
“For Maddie with lots of love, Grace”
Kenneth Ize.
“I’d like to introduce you to Fahd, who I decided to gift this piece to. Fahd is an illustrator based in Lagos, and we met during a road trip to Accra. I recently spoke to Fahd on paying a tribute to his dad and to also celebrate Father’s Day.”
Lisi Herrebrugh and Rushemy Botter of Nina Ricci
Lisi Herrebrugh and Rushemy Botter of Nina Ricci. ‘Hey, meet Glovey’, 2020. Latex gloves artwork. Made in Botter’s studio in Paris. Object of love created for my little nephew, Novan.
“This work comes from a time where the contrast of love and fear are tightly connected. Attracting and subtracting each other by the disallowance of the presence of loved ones. Believing that modernity could threaten the collective memory and tradition, we wanted to get back to where a child could still be very happy with the simple gift of a balloon. Which to us has the meaning of happiness and sadness all together. We choose to use the technique of balloon modeling to make this balloon animal from easily accessible and ‘poor’ materials like latex gloves, as everyone is using them now as protection. Linking current time to childhood memories in order to complicate its viewers’ sense of passing time.”
Lucinda Chambers, fashion director, designer and stylist
Lucinda Chambers.
“I think I might be giving a set of these to pretty much everyone I love as they are a labor of love! They take quite a lot of sanding down, which is, I have to say, extremely therapeutic. Your mind can travel elsewhere. I love the fact that they are repurposed, green (my favorite color) and free. And, above all, useful.”
Maisie Wilen.
“Maisie has been developing SS21 prints with clay. For her gift, she cut one of my print
developments into a puzzle to give to her friend Ana, who she’s been swapping puzzles with during quarantine.”
Marland Backus.
“Vita [Haas] has been my best friend for over ten years! She’s one of the biggest supporters of my work so I love making her gifts. She was meant to come visit me in Tokyo in March, and I was meant to go to New York in May. Not sure when we’ll get to see each other but hopefully soon!”
Nastasha Ghosn.
“I made a birthday card for my best friend, Maliea Croy.”
Sandra Choi.
“My 10-year-old daughter Phoenix loves making things; she made me these rings with a glue gun and stones. The simplest freely imagined jewelry made out of intuition and creativity. We talked about how the shades of green symbolize the jade stone, and that she went to the garden and found a piece of stone as the ‘rock’ make it equally honest and precious. I think they are one of a kind, and have kept them so one day I can find a craftsman to turn these pieces of art into rings that I will treasure and pass on. The most enduring meaning born from a very challenging moment of time.”
