Packaging.

Christmas is on the way, and with it, lots of stuff to wrap. I like wrapping a few things and doing it well, but too many and I am not so happy. Many years ago, our friend Pamela offered her services as a Christmas wrapper in our children’s school’s PTA auction. I snapped her up and gave her everything. She has yet to forgive me. But it was worth it.

Good packaging isn’t just for Christmas. It’s for life.

We’ve put a lot of thought into our packaging. It will make you happy, and the first impression that it gives is super-important.

Packaging clearly influences our purchasing decisions. At its best it signifies exactly what we’re buying, and it quickly and eloquently indicates not just what’s inside, but tells us stories about the product: quality, provenance, price, value. We’re all deeply attuned to this language.

That iconic Tesco Basics packaging (nicked by Banksy, but really part Warhol, part ‘we don’t give a damn about packaging, it’s only value that we care about’) showed us what was inside with exceptional eloquence.

A New Order album sleeve by Peter Saville said to anyone that encountered it, ‘you may not know what this music is, but you can definitely tell that it is of true quality’. And I clearly remember a trip to Cartier with one of my daughters to buy a birthday present; the packaging was magnificent, and she held onto it for years.

Packaging matters.

We tend to assume that the carrots that are elegantly wrapped in natural netting are better than those in plastic.

But we don’t really know how they’re better. And in many ways that doesn’t matter because it’s how we feel that counts.

Now, to some people this is nonsense, but to me it really isn’t. If you take your host some garage-bought roses in stiff cellophane with the £5.99 sticker still half attached, they simply won’t feel as good -to you, the recipient, anyone- as the very same roses that are delivered in tissue and ribbon.

You know that and so do we.

When we launched Gladstone / Hellen I’d been shocked at the quality (for which read, lack of) of some recent packaging I’d received. No magic, no anticipation, no care really.

To an extent companies are greenwashing with packaging too; keeping it minimal to save the planet, but importing it from China.

At Gladstone / Hellen, we’ve considered all of this deeply, because it is so often overlooked by online retailers; all of the brand work has been done with photos/social media etc, and what we get through the letterbox is essentially a jumper in plastic with a mean little slice of tissue paper inside the folds.

That is not what you get when you buy from us. We’ve considered everything so that it’s beautiful, made in the UK if we can find it and well-made. And you might even want to keep it and use it for other things.

So much of our daily interaction with the clothes we choose to wear, and the objects we surround ourselves with, is about how they make us feel. Us, not others.

If we feel good everything else starts to fall in place. Choosing what we wear, what we use, and what we surround ourselves with are fundamentally selfish acts.

We believe that if we deliver your goods in considered packaging, your entire relationship with those things gets off to a good start.

Many of our customers have commented on this and one long-term supporter recently posted on Instagram, ‘You are such a cut above the rest’.

It's obvious really. Make it special. Take care of the details and everything else will follow.

And finally, here are some new products. If you’re kind enough to buy something, I promise that the packaging will be good.

All best
Charlie