12 Things That Delighted Us Last Week: From Red Pants to ‘It’ Water Bottles

When Strategist writer Katherine Gillespie spoke with founders, CEOs, and other highly traveled businesspeople about what they pack while juggling jet lag and investor meetings, the brand Bellroy came up again and again. Most popular is this streamlined tech kit that’s outfitted with plenty of pockets and elastic cable organizers. “New Level Radio founder and CEO Nathan Green (who is on the road more than 150 days a year) says it holds all of his cables and chargers and is essential for laptop productivity,” Gillespie reports.

This week’s installment of “Don’t Dillydally” includes a collaboration between Todd Snyder and New Balance that we think would make a pretty ideal last-minute gift for guys. The collection has three new and exclusive colorways of the classic suede platform 547 Legacy sneaker: black, desert rose, and olive.

If you’re still looking for a Christmas gift that doesn’t reveal exactly how long you waited to buy it, Strategist senior writer Lauren Ro recommends getting them the fancy version of something useful. “You know your receiver will put it to use, whether that’s something as basic as coffee or a pair of gloves,” she writes. Top of her list, though, is this umbrella from Davek that has a top-grain leather-covered curved handle, a satisfying one-touch button to open, and a 50-inch canopy. “Once you’ve tried Davek’s umbrellas, you really can’t go back to using anything else,” she says.

If you were to take a peek in Brenda Song’s bag, you’d very likely find a tube of this multipurpose balm inside. “I actually found out about it when I was pregnant, because I used it on my nipples for breastfeeding,” she told us. Two kids later, she still uses it for everything from her kids’ lips to her cuticles.

“When I stumbled upon HigherDose’s new PEMF mat — an electric wellness mat meant to make you feel grounded, de-stressed, and recharged — it almost felt like I had uncovered some kind of advanced, alien wellness tech,” says our writer Brenley Goertzen. But after incorporating it into her routine over the past two months, she has been pleasantly surprised: “I’ve found that I’m less sore and achy, even when I’ve incorporated new exercises into my routine where tightness should be a side effect.”

“Fragrance is incredibly personal, and deciding which one to gift feels akin to guessing their coffee order,” says our beauty writer Krista Bennett DeMaio. As such, she had made it a point to never gift perfume until she discovered this fragrance that she describes as “so lightweight, subtle, and oddly skin-dependent that it wears less like traditional perfume and more like the wearer’s own essence, only better.” After lending her bottle to four other people, she collected the results: “Five people, five different reads, and all of them good — which is exactly why it’s the one perfume I feel safe giving to almost anyone.”

For most of her life, our updates coordinator, Najwa Jamal, reserved her red sweaters, shoes, and accessories for a pop of color — that is, until she took Jennifer Lawrence’s and New York’s own Madeline Leung Coleman’s monochromatic red ensembles as a sign that she too should cloak herself in head-to-toe red. And so she went on the hunt for a pair of perfectly red pants she could style with her red sweaters and landed on this option from Still Here that matched perfectly. Plus, she says, “the fit of the pants is somehow even more low-waisted than Reformation’s but never low or tight in the wrong places, and the wide-legged pant legs were perfectly baggy.”

Casey Lewis, who writes the newsletter After School, has watched tens of thousands of Christmas wish lists on TikTok over the past four years. This holiday season, it turns out the items most coveted by teens are a sunrise alarm clock, just about anything from Rhode, and this year’s new “It” water bottle from HydroJug. She reached out to Gracie, 19, to learn more about the appeal: “I would never choose any of those two over this,” Gracie says. “I can bump it upside down and nothing spills out.”

Until recently, Strategist senior writer Michael Zhao didn’t think twice about the process of weighing his coffee beans: “A cup goes on the scale and gets tared. The right amount of beans goes in and is then poured into a grinder.” Then he discovered this device that combines the scale and cup in one, making the process both simpler and more enjoyable. “Using the device feels so intuitive that I wonder how I ever measured beans without it, and it would make an excellent gift for anyone who enjoys making pour-over coffee or espresso at home,” he writes.

While searching for gifts to add to her wish list — including a cast-iron pigeon and some downright decadent soap oil — our writer Dominique Pariso has made time to do some trend-spotting. “Over Thanksgiving, I went to an antique mall with my mom and spied two antique silver coin purses,” she writes in her “Strategist Brain.” “After that, I saw them appear on not one but two different gift guides, so I suggest buying now while the eBay prices are still low.”

If you’re stuck shopping for someone who “has everything,” Strategist contributor Rose Anderson has one piece of advice for you: Get them an art book. To help make the task easier, she rounded up some of her favorites, from the classics she gives again and again to some of this year’s most exciting new releases. Xavier F. Salomon’s and Miguel Flores-Vianna’s new book that takes you through Henry Clay Frick’s 1914 home room by room falls into the latter category. “It’s like gifting a museum visit without the crowds,” she adds.