Wrap Master : Presentation Is the Thing and Massimo Butera Believes in the Spirit of Giving--Artfully
Man may be noble in reason, infinite in faculty, like an angel in action and perhaps even like a god in apprehension. Yet what a piece of work he is when he tries to wrap a Christmas present.
Without intending to sound sexist or overly broad or just plain obvious, let it be noted that most women delight in the art of gift-wrapping. Most men, however, do not.
Candy Spelling, for instance, devotes an entire room of her Holmby Hills manse for wrapping presents--complete with custom-built shelves for paper and ribbons. Spelling, wife of Aaron and mother of Tori, told Vanity Fair that she finds gift-wrapping “therapeutic.”
Most men, on the other hand, need therapy after wrestling with unruly seas of crinkling paper and unsticking themselves from the bite of uncooperative tape. A man’s idea of Yuletide finesse is a Target bag with the top festively stapled shut. I must confess I am one such man.
And then there is Massimo. Paragon of presentation. Titan of tape. Wizard of wrap. Massimo Butera owns a small shop south of Ventura Boulevard in Studio City that wraps everything from videocassettes to electric guitars.
“There is nothing I can not wrap,” brags the Italian-born Massimo in a gently lilting accent. He starts planning in July for the Christmas rush of frazzled shoppers for whom wrapping a present is as steeped in mysticism as the ancient art of origami.
In the three weeks before Christmas, Massimo estimates that he and his small staff--all of them women--will wrap between 4,500 and 5,000 gifts. Even by conservative estimates, that’s a gift every 2 1/2 minutes.
In the process, Massimo--he likes to be called just Massimo--will go through 27,000 to 36,000 feet of ribbon. Not to mention countless reams of paper, dozens of rolls of transparent tape and hundreds of decorative doodads from miniature sleighs to bronzed apples.
Most of Massimo’s customers are women, perhaps because they appreciate a well-wrapped present. Men, more often than not, either go with the Target bag option or slap together an awkward blob of tape and crinkled paper--crowned by a stick-on bow. The true cowards plop their presents in those exorbitantly priced gift bags, which require no ribbon, no wrapping and no talent.
I stumbled upon Massimo’s shop while letting my fingers do the walking through the white pages. I had spent a night in the spare room, with a “No Wives Beyond This Point” sign taped to the door as I cursed myself for not standing 30 minutes in line at the Bullock’s gift-wrap stand.
The next day, I dialed.
“I was wrapping my wife’s Christmas presents last night . . . “ I began.
“And you made a mess of it, didn’t you?” he asked knowingly.
“Uh, yes.”
“You should have brought them to me.”
“You’re good?”
“I am the best in Los Angeles.”
So Massimo offered to show me, man to man, how to wrap a present his way, the right way. In the end, I felt like I was back in the 11th grade, watching Mr. Cardoza write trigonometry functions on the overhead projector. On its own, each step made sense, but together it was just a jumble of functions.
Step One: Measure the package and cut away all the extra paper. How much is enough is a judgment call that comes with practice. Massimo keeps a small chart taped to the leg of his worktable listing common box sizes and the corresponding amount of paper needed to wrap them. Too much paper, Massimo stresses, makes for an ugly present.
Step Two: Place the package off center on the paper and tape the wrapping to the bottom of the box. This provides the base upon which all other folds and tapes and cuts will be made.
Step Three: Fold the paper around the package until the end of the paper reaches an edge of the package and crease it. Then cut the paper carefully along the crease and use double-sided tape to stick it to the package. “So you don’t see the seam,” Massimo explains. “Nice and neat.”
Step Four: Next, fold the flaps of paper sticking out at either end at a diagonal to the box and tape the resulting flap to the box. Flip the box over and repeat, but this time, fold the edge of the paper over to hide the scissor mark. Again, use double-sided tape.
Step Five: Crease all the edges and inspect.
“The package is done.”
Right. But somehow even linear interpolations seem easy by comparison. And what about the bow? That’s another lesson.
Not to worry, Massimo reassured me. Most people--men and women--cannot wrap a present. “You really have to know what you’re doing,” he said. “There is a certain art to it.”
And most people are artless, even some of those who apply to work at his shop. Part of the application process is to wrap a simple box. One applicant performed so poorly that her box turned into a sphere.
“I should have kept it,” Massimo recalled in disgust. “You could roll it. No kidding.” She did not get the job. “If you don’t know the basics, just stay out of my hair.”
And some people are just plain foolish. Once, a man asked Massimo to wrap a Honda. Massimo told the man he could do it, but it would cost. The man settled for a giant bow instead. Countless times each year, people ask Massimo to wrap microwaves or big-screen televisions. Silly, Massimo claims. Just wrap the manual.
That’s what he’s doing this year for his wife, who is getting a gift far too unwieldy to wrap. Despite his expertise, the genetic imperative of Y chromosome takes over when he has to wrap his own gifts. So he doesn’t.
“Now, I put them in a box with some tissue, say, ‘Here you go,’ and, boom, that’s it.”
