“My favorite part of Easter entertaining is setting the table with flowers and treats—and giving something to everyone,” interior designer Christine Gachot of Gachot Studios says about celebrating the spring holiday. Traditionally, she spends it with her family—including children Boris and Jack, as well as English cocker spaniel Slim—at their apartment in Sutton Place. The Manhattan neighborhood, where I. M. Pei, Consuelo Vanderbilt, and Bill Blass all lived, is an idyllic oasis in the middle of the city, known for its classic six layouts as well as its cul-de-sacs. And Gachot’s apartment only adds to the lore: decorated in her firm’s warm minimalist style, Robert Rauschenberg lithographs hang alongside Noguchi lamps, Eames swivel chairs, and fuzzy sheepskin throws.
Every year, her husband and fellow co-principal of Gachot Studios, John Gachot, doodles on the name cards to give it a “wink of personality,” Gachot says. Then, she moves onto flowers. She likes to set her table with mismatched vases of differing heights that all fall within the same color palette, from antique Just Andersson Vessels from the 1920s to ceramics from Gallery BAC. Gachot fills them with springtime blooms like garden tulips, cherry blossoms, poppies, daffodils, and pale pink ranunculus. (The decorator has a longstanding relationship with Raquel Corvino flowers.) It’s all complimented by delicate green-and-white floral plates from Porta, as well as a pair of radicchio-shaped salt and pepper shakers.
But the sweetest things are, quite literally, the sweets themselves. “Let’s be honest, that’s the best part,” Gachot says, laughing. She fills vintage silver bowls and pails to the brim with mini pastel Cadbury eggs and places them throughout. On a side table sits a large—like really large—chocolate Easter Bunny. It’s a festive and comical accent that’ll get people talking.
And that’s just the food used as decor. Strawberry guava cake, blackberry cream cake, focaccia, and caviar potato chips are just some of the dishes the interior designer serves for her annual late Easter lunch. (“My family tends to sleep in at this point,” she says.)
Although Gachot sets a beautiful table, she admits that the true key to entertaining is just being relaxed about it all. “Entertaining is a gift you give your guests—your time, your effort, and hopefully a fond memory. Let people help if they want to, and let them lounge in a chair if they don’t,” she says. “Treat them like family.”
