An edit of chic Christmas decorations
38 last minute ornament ideas and Christmas decorations to snap up in the sales for next year, including Parisian-inspired designs, hand-painted styles and stockings...
Every year, two weeks before Christmas (when I was growing up) my mum would climb up the ladder into the loft of our house and haul down the boxes containing her large collection of carefully wrapped christmas decorations - a collection that she had been creating over the years since I was small. It included everything from red velvet covered mini song sheets, gold glitter spider webs and musical instruments; pine cones that we’d sprayed gold and would attach to the tree with wire and decorations she’d inherited from her mother. She even had a few she’d made by wrapping small boxes in fun festive paper. It was a moment I waited for each December with the same impatience as Christmas Day, so that I could unwrap each of the pretty ornaments, always excited to see what I would find and remember from the previous years.
Once they were all laid out on the floor, we then picked a color scheme for the tree; one year it was red and gold, another silver and burgundy and another silver and gold. Needless to say, we took our tree decorating very seriously and my mum took great pride and care of her collection - adding to it each January as the sales started, when she’d go rummaging for new treasures.
In 2020 I started creating my own Christmas tree collection, when, due to COVID travel restrictions I couldn’t go back to the UK and spend it with my mum and the rest of my family. I bought a Christmas tree for the first time in Paris and decorated it with baubles I’d found in the Christmas sections at BHV and Galeries Lafayette or that brands had kindly sent me. Since moving in with Victor two years ago and hosting Christmas at ours, my collection is finally growing and adding to it every year has become a tradition.
This year I looked for a few new decorations in the run up to Christmas as my collection is still a little small, but I’m also planning to do as she did and buy more in the sales, so I have dogeared a selection of favorites that I thought I would share with you! They range from elegant transparent glass baubles, hand painted ornaments and fun Parisian-inspired shapes - think a croissant and Eiffel Tower (as I am not opposed to a bit of kitsch at Christmas), and also tree toppers, garlands and stockings! Enjoy!