Best Interior Designer: Entertaining Under Pressure

Dear Ferreter of the Fashionable, oh Lady/Lad of Luxury tell me truly, when last did you make a really great entrance at a very important function (Brava) followed by a skillful stroll thought the crowd only to arrive at the center of the room and begin stripping off your over-priced yet highly-prized couture?

Heels, handbag, hose and more…. all slung on the floor exposed for the world to see; the minor “helpers” used to pull your great look together (duck tape, under wire, support tops, metal mesh, nylon wire, optical mirrors, etc.). “Well I never,” would be the correct response to this crazy suggestion.

However think about this: Doesn’t the same thing happen when you entertain in your home and you toss open the heart of the house (fount of all secrets and surprises), otherwise known as the kitchen, for all the world to see.

Yes salmon swim up stream, and I am certain a svelte figure is a happy by-product of their lone individual determination, which is much how I feel when voicing thoughts on this subject (pray to the Gods of Thunder that I’m cursed with that svelte problem, too).

The wide laborious stream of populous opinion seems poised to deposit the kitchen of today into the middle of the entry hall. If I want to greet my guests from a perch at my Hans Grohe accented sink I could just as easily ask them to use the back door and be done with the formalities. I could also ask them to bring their own folding lawn chair and a box of their favorite wine. Odds are these things won’t happen.

I am well aware that the role of host/hostess is often synonymous with that of the overachiever. The lines blur and we strain for the super-powers that may allow us to deal with the contractors, gardeners, decorator (like buttah), pool boy (I said nothing), school cross-walk attendant, parking attendant, receptionist, assistant, boss, client, florist, manicurist, hairstylist, boutique clerk, shoe repairman (save my Blanik’s, please), DJ, parking staff, housekeeper, kids and your spouse all the day of your dinner party.

And did I mention cooking, serving and cleaning as you go while 12 of your nearest and dearest float through your front door smelling of slow gin and an even slower luncheon, which they finished just in time to slip into their new Zac Pozen and through your front door?

In my world, the last thing I want at that moment is the heat of the oven, over which I am hovering, to melt the last hint of glue on my eyelashes and send my upswept “do” cascading down my neck like wet spaghetti.

My limit is stretched when I must be charming, entertaining, smart and sexy while stirring a vat of boiling water, pouring drinks, basting a dish in a sweltering oven while hawking freshly coiffed nibbles from trays of woven new-growth bamboo. I want to hide, be shielded, buffered, or (at bare minimum) to know that my escape is just through that door. Boys, put a door where a door wants to be!