Grand Wash Bag, Black Bloom

Hil and Sue both love this bag, and one of them adorns each of their dressing tables, keeping all their bits and bobs together in one beautiful place. The Grand Wash Bag is a properly luxurious piece: quilted cotton, hand block-printed with pink and lime green blooms on an inky black ground, finished with a wide zip and a vivid blue tassel.

And it really is grand. At 16 inches long, 7 inches high and 5 inches wide, it's a big old bag. Big enough, in fact, to swallow a full Dyson Airwrap and all of its attachments, which, as Hil is a huge fan of both her Airwrap and her Airstrait, is exactly why she fell for it. No more brushes rolling around the bottom of the suitcase.

Make-up, hair tools, toiletries, the lot. It's also the perfect Christmas present for anyone who has everything except somewhere to put it. And yes, Hil is quite mad enough to carry it as a clutch bag. We wouldn't put it past her.

The heritage behind it: Maison de Belle is a female-founded, female-owned brand that describes itself as “London Soul, Indian Craft”, and its story is a lovely one. It was born from a dream that refused to fade. Its founder grew up in Assam, captivated by the artistry of Indian textiles: the patience of the craftsman's hand, the rhythm of wooden blocks meeting cloth, and the quiet magic of patterns passed down through generations. Fashion called to her early, but it wasn't a path she was allowed to follow. So she tucked the dream away, carried it with her when she moved to the UK in her twenties, and years later finally answered it.

The craft: every piece is made using traditional hand block printing, with hand-carved wooden blocks, natural dyes and methods refined over generations. Maison de Belle works with small, family-run workshops whose artisans inherited the craft from their parents and grandparents. These aren't factories. They're homes, courtyards and small studios where printing is both livelihood and legacy. Many of these families are struggling to keep their art alive, because fast fashion doesn't need them. Maison de Belle does, and by working with them it's helping to preserve a craft at risk of disappearing, with fair wages for the makers and ethically sourced fabrics.

Small by design: only a few pieces of each design are ever made. When it sells out, it's gone. And because every block is pressed by hand, no two prints are ever perfectly identical. That's not a flaw. It's the signature of something made by people, not machines.