under the blanket

MIKRO House by Sam Buxton

Four museums in one day. Which, knowing me, means four gift shops in one day too. Good thing most museums are free and I get pretty generous concessions at the others. One of the privileges of being a student again.

Breezed through Tate Modern to see my fave upside-down piano crashing from the ceiling with a discordant DONG for, perhaps, the seventh time. Also couldn't resist browsing through the cavernous gift shop and ended up buying a touching little children's book that can be read in five minutes.

Walked half a mile along the Thames to make a brief stop at Design Museum to check out this intricate "doll house", cut cleverly from one piece of aluminium. Everything about it appealed to me -- miniature, home decor, technology, DIY, useless, accumulates dust -- and I was so tempted to buy it, even though it was only the size of my palm but cost £65. Ended up buying a teeny model Vespa as a substitute.

A hop and a skip away was the newly opened Fashion and Textile Museum, with an exhibition My Favourite Dress. So much promise, but such a disappointment. With 70 big names such as Donna Karan, Donatella Versace, Vera Wang and Vivienne Westwood contributing their favourite designs, you would think there would be plenty of pretty frocks for a vain girl like me to drool over. But it felt like an ego trip for these designers as they went on about how successful that collection was or which celeb wore which dress. Wasted my time, money and energy. And the gift shop was lousy too, with overpriced vintage scarves and the usual crappy postcards, posters and calendars.

Final stop at the National Gallery, cos my friend wanted to buy some Van Gogh stuff for his girlfriend. So it was a targetted sweep through the massive museum, looking for the gallery with Sunflowers in it, then zooming straight to the gift shop again. But the souvenirs were all so revolting, with his paintings printed indiscriminately on jigsaw puzzles, erasers, ugly knapsacks and even umbrellas, that we couldn't find anything worth buying.

Commercialism need not be crass; done tastefully, us consumers can be suckered into buying almost anything. And I'm probably displaying my shallow side here, but my fave museums are those with well-stocked gift shops.