Are you part of that section of the global population who usually feels overwhelmed by the most terrifying aspects of Christmas, from the rush to buy the perfect present that doesn't exist, to long family dinners that may escalate in generational quarrels?
Well, you should be even more terrified as this Christmas there seems to be quite a few more things to be afraid of - many of them courtesy of fashion houses and brands. Let's have a look at them to acknowledge the threats coming our way.
1. The Monstrous Advent Calendar
When I was a little girl the advent calendar was very simple: it usually consisted in an A4 or A3 piece of light cardboard with tiny doors. Behind each of them there was a generic Christmas motif or a religious one - images of stars, cute angels, gifts, baubles and so on. Every day you would open a little door and be content when the task was over as you knew that Christmas had finally arrived.
In the mid-'80s the basic calendar started morphing and became more elaborate: I remember that at the time I had a pop-up musical Christmas advent calendar. Made of cardboard with the usual tiny doors, my calendar also had a nativity scene incorporated in it. When you popped the nativity scene open, the calendar played a Christmas carol, a new addition to the traditional calendar.
Years passed and I forgot about advent calendars, but, two decades ago and after my nephews were born, I started paying attention again to them.
To my amazement, I discovered that they had become more commercial, they had acquired a new three-dimensionality and each window now offered a small treat such as a small chocolate representing a Christmas theme.
I thought they were kind of cute until one of my nephews got one of them, meticulously saved all the chocolates rather than eating them one a day and, on Christmas day, he melted them all in a mug of hot milk for that perfect chocolate binge. I stared in disbelief, half admiring the bravery of the gesture, half disgusted. I thought: "Never again."
More recently my nephews graduated onto elaborate advent calendars with collectible figures. They spare you the worry of the chocolate binge, but the content of the calendars become so precious that they turn into veritable altars to fandom that can't be touched for the rest of the year, so, soon, it will be August again and you will still be staring at FNAF's Frostbear forlorny covered in dust.
But it's not just advent calendars for children or young adults that have mutated turning into elaborate and bulky monstruosities, in most cases stripped of any Christmas symbols (well, at times they are Christmas-themed actually...).
Nowadays, you can have the most extravagant advent calendars, most of them requiring more space than a Christmas tree: Funko has several examples, with figurines celebrating a wide range of characters, heroes, horror films, Disney icons and the Pokémon franchise, just to mention a few of them.
But there are also calendars more geared towads adults, containing exclusive fine bone china ornaments (such as Wedgewood's; price: over €900), sex toys (from Ann Summers to Lovehoney - prices vary; these are what I call "etymologically" correct calendars - advent comes indeed from the Latin verb "advenio", which means, "I come"...), or food, from chocolates to caviar.
There are also empty ones that you can fill with the items you favour, but, in some cases (like Fortunum & Mason's), the empty box is more expensive than the advent calendar already filled with products leading to an existential dilemma - should I just leave it empty or should I put cheap presents in it, as I spent all the money I had on the actual box?
And then there's the advent calendar by prominent fashion or beauty brands: filled with beauty products and fragrances, in some cases they are more expensive than a design garment or accessory, even though nowadays they seem to contain more proper products (as opposed to Chanel's 2021 calendar that, retailing at over €700, was ridiculed at the time by a TikToker who unboxed it discovering cheap items such as stickers, temporary tattoos and a dustbag in some of its boxes).
Yves Saint Laurent's advent calendar will set you back €365 and Estée Lauder €349 (but there's more to discover in the vast world of advent calendars), while Dior offers a variety of calendars, consisting in a building-shaped box inspired by the façade of 30 Avenue Montaigne, featuring fragrances, beauty products and candles.
The starting price is $750 on its American site, but the limited edition (currently unavailable) is priced $4,200 (I sincerely hope that this amount of money also covers the rent of a room in New York, Paris or London for 24 days, and not just a house-shaped box as it would just be immoral...).
Despite being rather expensive, many of these luxury Christmas calendars sold out pretty quickly and there's a simple reason why: stressed, depressed and exhausted, we anesthethise ourselves with a small gift a day, a mini indulgence to fill a gigantic hole. If such gift is by a luxury house or a famous brand, then it makes us feel like a millionaire (to paraphrase that Temu slogan…).
Oh, well, after all, we all deserve a treat, especially when it's cold, dark and miserable outside, that said the monstrous calendars leave you too terrified to open the final window for too many reasons: what will you do after you get to 24 December? Where will you find instant and portable joy till the next day? And, above all, how long will it take you to separate all the different materials of the packaging and the mini products (plastic, paper, etc.) and recycle them? (nobody seems to address the sustainability of all these calendars filled with plastic miniatures...) Food for thought.
2. The Mutant Panettone
A we mentioned food, let's talk about it! When I was a young girl (yes, I know I sound like your granny or like a broken animatronic in a dusty museum exhibit about the 1800s…) there was just one type of panettone in Italy.
This classic Christmas cake only came with candied fruit and dried sultanas. I didn't like candied fruit, so I spent the last part of the Christmas lunch dissecting a panettone slice to remove each piece of candied fruit, even the tiniest one, something that annoyed the grown-ups, but proved I had put to good use the skills acquired from the "Operation" game I was given.
Nowadays, entering a supermarket in Italy around Christmas time and passing in front of the panettone/pandoro Christmas cakes display means to discover a world of fancy synthetic coloring agents and aromas that you didn't know existed.
These cakes come indeed with sickeningly sweet chocolate, limoncello, cherry, pear and champagne fillings; they are coated with thick layers of chocolate at times in garish colors such as vivid shades of pink that would give an overdose to Barbie. And, surprise-surprise, fashion brands have their own panettone cakes.
This is a controversial thought as fashion is an industry that inspires food disorders, yet it also has a longstanding affair with food. Actually, if you're a powerful fashion house, nowadays you MUST have your own historical patisserie, possibly in Milan.
In 2013, the LVMH Group bought Cova and, a year later, the Prada Group bought Marchesi 1824; yet not all of them have the money to buy an entire pastry shop, so most of the others content themselves with food collaborations that multiply around Christmas.
Some people were excited to see Balenciaga's models in Los Angeles carrying bags of the local trendy gourmet grocery store Erewhon to launch the collaboration between the store and the fashion house.
The collaboration consists in a capsule collection (tote bag, cap, T-shirt...the usual) and in a black smoothie with apple, lemon, ginger, cinnamon and charcoal as main ingredients, yet the food and fashion collaboration has been going on for a while in Italy.
Previous examples of similar marketing moves include La Double J taking over Milan's Pasticceria Cucchi's chocolate boxes and panettone wrappings in 2019; the Attico's Gilda Ambrosio and Giorgia Tordini teaming with the Sant Ambroeus café (another Milanese cafè that originally belonged to Simonetta Festorazzi and her family, sold in 2021 to New York-based SA Hospitality Group), for a capsule collection comprising a T-shirt, a sweatshirt and coffee cup in 2022.
Massimo Giorgetti's MSGM recently launched a capsule with another Milanese pastry shop, Pasticceria Gattullo (this is the second food collaboration, a previous one was launched with Pasticceria Cucchi for MSGM's Fall 2018 collection).
The new collaboration consists in a capsule collection (T-shirts, bowling shirts, sweaters, hoodies, a velvet cap and a scrunchie) with both ths MSGM and Gattullo's logos and special prints celebrating Gattullo's Mirtillino pastry with blueberry jam and the historic Domenichino aperitif, a Campari-based drink made with a secret recipe.
All these collaborations are more about food and fashion, but let's move onto the panettone madness. You can, for example, get a Marchesi panettone, even though, despite not being branded by Prada, it will set you back €445. I'm not sure if the velvet and silk box that contains it can be turned into a IT bag, but I hope so, because that sounds a bit too much for a panettone (or maybe that's just Prada trying to get back some of the money invested in it - Marchesi was actually a bad business for the company with losses hitting €27 million...).
But the history of the properly branded panettone (and not just of the panettone produced by a pastry owned by a fashion house), is actually long and comprises also Gucci Osteria's panettone.
For quite a few years now Dolce & Gabbana collaborated with cake and sweets family company Fiasconaro, for their traditional panettone that comes in boxes with Sicily-inspired prints and motifs.
An orgy of flavours, with Sicilian citrus, saffron, chestnuts and guanduja, these panettone cakes at times come with pistachio, manna or chocolate spreads for that extra layer of decadence (but to think that only 30 years ago if they saw you putting Nutella on a panettone slice, you instantly became the subject of scorn among friends and relatives). A while back D&G also did a panettone with Vecchio Samperi wine that you could spray on the panettone from a fragrance bottle.
Then there's Moschino's panettone made in collaboration with the Martesana patisserie, in black and gold tones, matching by pure chance the palette of Don Carlo, currently on at Milan's La Scala, and evoking kitsch designs such as Moschino's '90s panettone jacket (View this photo - yes, I know this jacket is tremendously kitsch...).
Etro also collaborated with chefs Fabio Pisani and Alessandro Negrini from the restaurant Aimo & Nadia on an exclusive panettone coming in an embossed metal box decorated with the brand's jacquard print.
Like the advent calendar, the fashion panettone offers fashionistas who can't afford luxury products the possibility to jump on the trendy bandwagon through a traditional delicacy turned at times into a monstrous cake, enriched with creams, thick layers of chocolate or sold in huge boxes.
So, eat, eat, eat like the very hungry caterpillar, but remember to lose the weight in excess before the next runway shows, because this industry will always be fatphobic. You wonder when they will start selling branded drugs to make you lose weight...maybe that's the next step for these fashion houses. Balenciaga branded Ozempic anybody?
3. The Bizarre and Questionable Branded Christmas Tree
In 2014, the butt plug-shaped Christmas tree sculpture by American artist Paul McCarthy installed in Paris' Place Vendôme caused some shock: was this an anal plug or an actual Christmas tree? The dilemma persisted (while the sculpture reappeared as a pendant in Walter Van Beirendonck's A/W 2015-16 collection), but, in his defense, we may say that the supposedly anal plug-shaped object, still managed to evoke a Christmas tree.
Yes, he was probably taking the piss and some people had very different images coming across their minds when they saw it, but some of the current Christmas trees by prominent fashion houses look even more questionable.
Louis Vuitton's Christmas trees in the lobby of London's Claridge's hotel consists in a large trunk adorned with Claridge's travel stickers that opens to reveal shiny trunks piled high with 21 Louis Vuitton's Vivienne mascots scattered around the display.
No star or angel at the top, but a self-referential model of Asnières, the historic home of the Louis Vuitton family and atelier.
Was it inspired by Yayoi Kusama's infinity rooms and by the space race? It does look like a rocket, after all, now if only the roof of the Claridge's could open like a secret space base, we could blast it into the vast universe and forget about it.
Mind you, once in space it may start a war with more intelligent forms of life, so, on second thoughts, let's keep it on earth and diligently wait till January to see it dismantled.
Reflective shiny surfaces seem very en vogue for appalling branded Christmas trees as proved by Gucci's tree installed in Milan's Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II.
Lit with a ceremony that featured also Milan’s mayor Giuseppe Sala, since this is supposed to be a sponsored Christmas tree for the city, it consists in a pile of 78 gift boxes (shiny and lumious crossovers between Jeff Koons' statues and Andy Warhol's mylar pillows) with Gucci's trademark horsebit buckle.
Many people complained on social media that it looked like the luggage depot at Linate airport, but actually it looks even worse. A luggage depot still makes you think about the people behind the suitcases, this Christmas tree simply leaves you cold, reminding that Christmas for these brands is just about selling products.
According to the Italian press, the luxury brand not only set up the tree in the Galleria, decorating also its vault, but also illuminated a kilometer of streets in the Corvetto area of the city (in the south of Milan) and took care of the decorations for three schools and the kindergarten in this neighbourhood, with a total investment of €1,085,946.40. Next time, it would be better to spend more on social projects engaging young people, and less on supposedly modern installations like this one.
Concluding thoughts on advent calendars, mutant panettone cakes and bizarre Christmas trees? Just be patient, before you know it, all this will be gone. Just remember you don't need a grand advent calendar, a super luxurious panettone and a branded tree to feel alive at Christmas - it may banal to say it, but you just need a sparkle of love and a sprinkle of hope.
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