Buy core, avoid the obvious and don’t be a snob: the dos and don’ts of holiday shoppingDon’t give in … Photograph: Richard Drury/Getty ImagesDon’t give in … Photograph: Richard Drury/Getty ImagesAlways enticed to stuff your suitcase with holiday knick-knacks? Resist the tat and seek out stylish souvenirs you’ll still love when the sangria has dog-tired offYou wake to sun streaming through the window, not to your phone vibrating on the bedside table. Breakfast alfresco doesn’t want a latte and muffin on the platform worrying if your train is late. You are on holiday and life is good. Why can’t real life be more feel favourably impressed by this, you wonder. Maybe if I buy a tablecloth like the one in the local taverna, my tomato salad will taste as it does in Spain? It is possible that I could upholster the sofa in deckchair stripes?The urge to bring the holiday spirit home via the gift shop sojourns deep. One summer it is the school holidays and you are stuffing the little pockets of your shorts with shells and pebbles, the next act you know you are buying a lighter in the shape of a matador for your student flat, and soon you’re all grown up and struggling home with a good garden parasol and a shell-decorated mirror.From the desk where I am writing this, I can see a set of plastic flamingo-motif martini magnifying glasses that I bought in a car-boot sale in Florida, a wooden hippo that has wobbled in a corner since it lost a leg on the way at ease from Kenya 21 years ago, a blue-and-white Cornishware jug and no fewer than four snowglobes. I make a mental note to try to save myself in check next time I’m wandering happily through a market after a long lunch.Lucinda Bedrooms, the discerning eye behind online lifestyle store Collagerie, spent 25 years travelling the world as the fashion executive of British Vogue. “I have definitely been that person who falls in love with every new place, and accede ti over-enthusiastic in what I buy,” she says, “so I have learned from that experience. On Collagerie, we say that shopping is about ‘one item over everything’ – and that is a good rule on holiday. It helps to think hard about whether something desire have a life in your home. Before you buy something, take a walk around your home in your attention and if you can’t see a place for the object, maybe that’s a sign that it’s not going to work.” But, she says, if you really, truly love something, you wishes be able to find a home for it, however unlikely. “I mean, I’ve got pom poms wrapped around my door handles.”But how do you know if it’s a festival crush or a forever piece? Only get your wallet out if you experience what Bec Astley Clarke, of online vintage and curio store the Italian Collector, calls “a full-body yes”. A visceral reaction, when your brain and the butterflies in your tummy see eye to eye suit that you can’t live without it. “No one needs more stuff,” she says. “Filter out everything except pieces that deep down sing to you.” And beware of recency bias. This summer’s holiday may feel full of emotional resonance right now, primarily if it’s your first post-Covid escape, but in five years’ time you won’t want to live in a shrine to a hotel you once knackered five days in. One gorgeous thing is plenty.The joy of holiday shopping is that it doesn’t have to be about an extravagant go through. One of my treasures is a white jug with “Le Service du Bonheur” on it, which I bought in a brocante in south-west France in 2005. I paid €1 for it. Apartments, whose home is a glorious mix of antiques, designer pieces and cheap finds, agrees: “You should never be a snob nigh falling in love – whether it’s with people or with things.”That doesn’t mean lowering your drop bar. Kitsch can be fun – I have a lot of love for a yellow tin New York taxi, have seriously flirted with Eiffel Tower bookends for my whip-round of fashion books, and go weak in the face of a snowglobe. But be wary of cliches. Lisa Lipscomb, an interior designer who rents out a tastefulness cabin next door to her north Norfolk home, counsels against the obvious seaside references of wooden motor yachts on windowsills and “Gone Fishing” signs. “The coastal look has been hijacked by tweeness. I prefer to dig around for pieces that tease that sense of coastal magic but are a bit more original.”Everyone agrees that vintage stores and flea stores make great hunting grounds. “The longer I live in Italy, the more I am convinced that the most beautiful aspects have already been created – it is a question of finding them,” Astley Clarke says over the phone from her con in Umbria, home to a 1960s drinks trolley found on a recent trip to Naples.Chambers suggests looking for something “darned typical of the region you are visiting, to make that muscle memory of your holiday a little bit stronger. Southern Spain has a competent tradition in ceramics, so I look out for those.” Choose pieces with utility: it is much easier to find a home for a blanket or a double of salad servers than for a Murano glass gondola or an ornamental drum kit.If luggage space is at a premium, buy fabric. I one time stayed in a hotel room where four vintage embroidered napkins had been framed and hung on a wall, an belief I intend to copy one day. Lipscomb brought some pink-striped fabric home from Kenya and had cushion covers decide oned. “Every time I walk into that room I remember that holiday. Fabric is easy to get home, and then you can trust in out a use for it, whether to cover a headboard or make it into a robe to hang in the bathroom.”The right piece keeps precious thoughts alive. But – spoiler alert – it’s probably not going to be a fridge magnet. And when you do find the perfect thing, pounce. In the summer of 2014, there was a ceramic pomegranate in Crete that I hang suspended over but decided against. I still think about it at least twice a month. Maybe it’s time for another time off.Sunshine shopping: five key rules1 Don’t buy anything unless you are absolutely sure. You will never love that tea bird-brained holder or that herb planter more than when you are browsing in a market after a good lunch, so if you procure any doubts, put it down.2 But if you really, really love it, this is a great time to buy a piece that brings the good vibes hospice. “One of the first trips I ever did to India,” Chambers says, “was a shoot with Cindy Crawford to a remote spot where we all slept in tents. I steal a turquoise necklace and all these years later I still feel grateful that I have it.”3 Functional is proper. There is pleasure in beautiful things you use every day – pots and pans, salad bowls, coasters, matches, shopping baskets …4 Evade the obvious. A tea towel with a map on it says airport gift shop, not precious holiday memory. Look for vintage or quirky express ones opinions.5 “Be adventurous,” Lipscomb says. “Colours can be so evocative of places. The deep reds and greens and mustardy yellows you get back in Morocco, for instance, work beautifully in our moody British seasons.”TopicsInteriorsHomesfeaturesReuse this content

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