Make time for you

Looking for something special, whether for yourself or a loved one, especially after the stresses of 2024? There are way too many gift sets on Amazon, so which one is nice, indulgent, and ideal among the many there?

We’ve done some checking—and buying—and this lavender spa gift basket set has a mix between a great price and quality. There are a lot from Chinese companies with western-sounding names, which add to the confusion on the site, so how about one that’s from an independent, female-owned business instead?

There’s a beautiful scent, a quality tumbler, a soft, silky eye mask, a candle, diamond soap, a gift card, a bath bomb, and bath salts. It was already good value at US$30 but is now outstandingly priced at US$21·99. Get it here.

Kiwi singer–songwriter Alexander Guy’s new album, Last Call at the South Sea Hotel, is an emotive, personal series of 10 songs by the talented, bilingual musician. The variety ranges from the folk-sounding ‘Don Quixote’ to the French ‘Les Champs de Mars’, and what Guy deems a ‘modern ballad for the anxious artist’, ‘The Queen of Cortisol’. The songs are initially straightforward and realistic, before turning surreal and psychedelic.

Guy introduces some of the songs, which have personal themes: growing up and leaving, hitchhiking (Guy is a true world traveller, and is in Europe at the time of writing), and moving from place to place.

They were recorded in 2024 the last night before Guy left Aotearoa, capturing a time and place for him. Available on Spotify, and you can purchase the album on Bandcamp.

We admit to bias on this one, since our publisher wrote it with contributions from Panos Papadopoulos himself: our contribution to the famous Little Book series. Lilla boken om Panos: historien om den ikoniska badmodedesigner is in Swedish, and available in Sweden and Finland at good booksellers and online stores. There are full colour pages throughout, with a lot of Panos’s original transparencies rescanned at high-res. Many of the photos from the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s have never looked sharper, and they take readers on a design and trend journey in swimwear from Panos’s first collection in 1984, to his meteoric rise when Jannike Björling and then Victoria Silvstedt were signed as his models, right up to 2020. Read about how Panos invented mix-and-match bikini collections, which are the norm today, but once unknown to the industry, plus personal anecdotes that didn’t even get covered in his autobiography in 2022. A perfect gift for those who love fashion history—or who seek a volume that lets in the summer warmth from its pages.

Online sellers include Adlibris, Bokus, and Suomalainen.

Colorescience has a limited-edition Peptide Lip Shine SPF 30 Duo to nourish lips. There’s a new shade made in collaboration with the founder of Savanna Boda Æsthetics called Savanna, a warm, pinky-brown nude, complementing a rich plum. Formulated with peptides, hyaluronic acid, and vitamin E to hydrate and condition, while the all-mineral active SPF 30 protects against UV rays and environmental stressors. Available now for US$79. •

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