My well-documented obsession with holiday decor has led me down a number of strange online rabbit holes over the years. These include the predictable—TikToks of Mormon micro-influencers decorating gingerbread houses—and the more absurd: namely, my membership in not one, not two, but three Facebook groups devoted to vintage ornament-collection. I haven’t used Facebook to catch up with my actual friends in about a decade, but as it turns out, it’s a great forum for networking with Ukrainian grandmothers about where to find the best deals on pre-Soviet-era Christmas tree stars that almost certainly contain lead paint (a small price to pay for their beauty!)
This year, however, my Christmas and Hanukkah decor obsession led me to three collectors whose ornaments have brought me to the brink of envious tears. Below, take a tour through the at-home holiday wonderlands Leben Riebe, Linda Fargo, and James Aguiar have created:
Leben Riebe
“I have been enamored with Christmas ornaments and decorations ever since I can remember,” says Riebe, who, appropriately, goes by @vintageholiday on Instagram. “As a child, my favorite part of the holidays was decorating the tree. I loved the lights, I loved the tinsel icicles, I loved the ornaments. I really couldn’t get enough! I would have covered every inch of our family home in some type of holiday decor if I had been allowed.”
Now, decorating Christmas trees isn’t just a seasonal hobby for Riebe; he describes it as “a creative outlet where I can explore different ideas and schemes I have dreamed up all year long. I especially love being able to open up boxes of my favorite vintage Christmas ornaments and combine them in new ways to create new themes each season.”
Linda Fargo
Not every holiday-decor collector can say they own an assortment of Christmas ornaments crafted in their own image, but not every collector is Fargo—Bergdorf Goodman’s SVP of Fashion Office Store Presentation—whose likeness has been recreated by Bergdorf’s in miniature for the past 13 years.
“I never dreamed that there would be a mini-me fashion ‘Linda,’ hand-blown in Italy by local glassmakers and collected properly by customers who, each year, can’t wait for the next one to come out,” says Fargo. “It’s all rather pinch-me.”
She continues: “Each year, ‘Linda’ gets to wear either an iconic look from an event I attended—like the Schiaparelli cape or the Tomo tulle concoction for the Met Gala, or the Naeem Khan golden gown created for Vienna‘s Life Ball—or she gets to wear a signature piece of fashion, like a leopard coat. Sometimes she’s an alter ego, wearing something I dreamed to have worn, like the Schiaparelli halo couture gown. If I had to choose a favorite, it would be the ‘Linda’ in the hot pink Gucci coat from Alessandro Michele’s first year at the house, which coincided with the opening of the Linda shop at Bergdorf Goodman. She’s so whimsical, high-fashion, and cheeky, all at once.”
James Aguiar Mark Haldeman
Aguiar and Haldeman’s marriage more or less began with ornaments. “In the early days of our relationship, we started a tradition of exchanging an ornament with each other for Christmas,” recalls Aguiar, creative director of Isaac Mizrahi Live!. “We both loved vintage or vintage-style Christmas ornaments—funny faces, pastel colors, interesting shapes, flora and fauna, as well as pagodas, mushrooms, and clip-ons.”
It follows that storing the couple’s vast assortment of holiday baubles is no small thing. “Ornaments are organized by size, collection and color, each wrapped meticulously and placed in storage bins,” says Aguiar. “Some are in their original boxes, labeled with the date they were purchased and then placed in special storage reserved for holiday paraphernalia.”
After years of shared celebration, Aguiar and Haldeman have their holiday routine down to a science. “We generally start the season with our annual post-Thanksgiving holiday kick-off party, followed by a day perusing John Derian Co. for new ornaments—the best in the city by far!—then running uptown to watch the Bergdorf Goodman window reveal with our dear friend Linda Fargo…and, yes, she’s on the tree in her many iterations! We end with a dinner at Il Buco Alimentari or Cipriani,” reports Aguiar. “The rest of the season includes sitting in the living room and staring at our beautiful tree, entertaining friends with intimate dinner parties, and then ending the season with our Open House on New Year’s Day.”
