100th Birthday
100 years isn’t a milestone, it’s a monument. And coming up with a gift worthy of that is one of the tougher briefs in gift giving. Because there’s nothing generic will suffice and everyone in the room knows it. This isn’t some birthday you can buy something nice looking and call it done. They’ve lived the entire twentieth century and a large chunk of this one. Outlasted fashions, technologies, governments, and probably a few of your best ideas about gift giving.
We built this collection because when it came to centenary gifts, every other gift guide simply failed. They offered the same stuff they’d offer for an eightieth, just with a bigger number on the badge. That didn’t feel right to us. A collection for 100th birthdays should have things that celebrate the occasion as much as the person. Things that properly mark an incredible journey that your whole family and friends have been lucky enough to share.
Everything we’ve included here works on at least one of those three levels. It honours the person celebrating. It gives you gifts the family and friends will remember long after the birthday itself. Or it does something quietly extraordinary that a generic gift simply cannot. Some of the things we picked will be personal to the life they’ve lived. Some of it is pure celebration to fill up the room you’re in. Whatever you choose, none of it is filler.
When picking out gifts, we also thought a lot about the person who’ll be receiving them. At a hundred, you simply can’t give anything and everything applies. We ruled out things that have a learning curve. We ruled out things that need charging. And we ruled out things that you’d much rather give to someone sixty years younger. Instead we focussed on things that feel genuinely considered. Gifts that speak to who this person is now rather than just the milestone they’re reaching.
Their century is worth celebrating and honouring properly. The gifts in this gift guide are our attempt at doing just that. We didn’t choose them because they’re easy. We chose them because they’re the right ones.