80th Birthday
Eighty years is not a small accomplishment. A gift for eighty years should not be a small effort. Eighty is the birthday where a little something just won’t cut it. Where an easy but uninspired present isn’t just an accidental oversight, it’s a befuddling indifference to the magnitude of something that took eight whole decades to reach.
We discovered that was difficult to buy for than it sounds like. Because so much of what gets paraded as the gift for a milestone birthday is just your everyday consumerism dressed up with a fancy ribbon.
We wanted different for this. We started by asking who watches eighty arrive, and realised that’s someone who already has plenty. Someone who has lived a full life and doesn’t need more just for the sake of having more. What they deserve is something worthy of the occasion. Whether that’s something to commemorate the life that’s been lived so far. Or a way to spend more wonderful years that shows eighty years old is far from past its best. Or a carefully crafted keepsake they’d never otherwise splurge on just because you understand the importance of today.
The items here aren’t chosen because they’re expensive or because they’ll photograph well in our editorials. Each one passed the test we set ourselves: Does this honour them or the occasion? Or does it simply bang on loudly about how special it thinks birthdays are? Too many things we saw did the former. They looked like birthday gifts, but didn’t feel like them. We’ve omitted those.
Here you will find ten things we think are special enough to meet a milestone like eighty. Some of them will work best with a personal touch applied. Some require none at all. Each one was chosen because eighty years is deserving of more than what would suffice for any other birthday. Because it’s the finish line of eight decades, not the start line of another.
It’s a milestone. Make it count with a milestone gift.