Gifts for the Daring Darling: Madeline

“in an old house in paris that was covered with vines lived twelve little girls in two straight lines… The smallest one was Madeline.” It was in 1939 that the world first met Ludwig Bemelmans’ spirited Parisian heroine who, despite her petite stature, had an outsize appetite for adventure, be it running off with the circus or getting rushed to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy. With her Bretonne hat and cloak, she was also très chic—no surprise, considering the dashing reputation of her creator, whose illustrations graced New Yorker and Town & Country covers, the walls of the famed Carlyle hotel bar, and what was no doubt the world’s poshest children’s dining room aboard Aristotle Onassis’s yacht, the Christina.

In the spirit of Madeline’s expertly honed sense of personal style (not to mention a love for her bread, her butter, and when it came to her schoolmates, each other) we’ve assembled a selection of treasures worthy of the fanciful Francophile in your life.