My gift is the first to be unwrapped. “Oh, how wonderful! The Longchamp collection!” My future daughter-in-law knows her classics! “And not just any one, right, Mum?” I expain to the others that this is the service my parents gave me on the day of my Christening. Since the two that they owned had already been ‘reserved’ for my daughters, they’d given me a third. “That way, no one can get jealous!” my father had said, he who had a particular attachment to what, in his eyes, Longchamp symbolised: a unique expertise,the precious inheritance of a past which survived still.

“Let’s see what surprise your sisters have in store for you.” Again, it’s easy to read the surprise on the young couple’s faces. And then the laughter starts, and soon spreads. In the box are brand new Longchamp flutes! “Either great minds think alike, Mum, or your daughters are also hoping to inherit my service!”.
And this was when I realised that Cristal d’Arques Paris pieces will never go out of fashion, that to many of us they are timeless. Even more so than I could have imagined, in fact!