Many of us learn how to set a table as children. The task of silverware placement and napkin arranging begins as a relatively simple one, taught through phonetic devices like B-M-W (bread, meal, water) or various colorful stories that involve the knife protecting the spoon. (A knight guarding a princess, a shepherd watching his sheep.) Yet, for some, setting a table transcends from a childhood chore into a fully-fledged art form.
This November, Vogue asked five cultural figures known for their eye-catching aesthetics—from James Beard Award-winning chefs, to fashion designers, to society grande dames—to create an inspirational tablescape for Vogue. The only directive was that it needed to be a holiday table. Some promptly ignored it: “I m not a holiday person,” Warhol muse and philanthropist Deeda Blair tells me, while others embraced it wholeheartedly. Indeed, CFDA-nominated designer Tanner Fletcher has even set up a whole holiday decor shop on their website featuring vintage and antique tableware.
Below, find five distinct festive tablescapes to inspire your Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Hannukah decor—and one (courtesy of Mrs. Blair) to inspire you all year round.
Tanner Fletcher
“It’s all English countryside vibes,” Fletcher Kasell says of his and Tanner Richie’s holiday table. The duo behind the CFDA-nominated fashion brand Tanner Fletcher intertwined a lace runner with a cedar garland, and instead of candles, opted for five different vintage lamps. In fact, everything on their table is vintage: from the silver trays down to the napkin rings. (1960s Italian, in case you were wondering.) “Some things are from my mom, from the Midwest—she’ll send us boxes of stuff,” Richie says, laughing.
Their table does have a distinct folksiness to it: like it belongs to a chic grandmother in the Cotswolds, or F. Scott Fitzgerald’s family in turn-of-the-century St. Paul, Minnesota.
Even the food—a homey apple pie—exudes a warm, sentimental fuzziness. “You should feel like you’re in this nostalgic world, but it’s still modern at the same time,” says Kasell.
Deeda Blair
The 92-year-old Deeda Blair—one of New York’s last society swans—doesn’t do holiday decorating. “Think of putting lights on a Christmas tree, how long that takes and how long it takes to take them off—it consumes so much time,” she says. “And I have a house that I don t want any red in, so there you are.”
When Vogue and its photographer enter her apartment at River House—the iconic apartment building where Henry Kissinger, Greta Garbo, and Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney all lived—as promised, there’s no red in sight. Instead, there are blues, greys, and creams, her home boasting a cool pastel-hued reserve with touches of neoclassicism and Scandinavian minimalism. (Blair’s husband, William “Bill’ Blair, was the ambassador to Denmark and later the Philippines.) By a window overlooking the East River is a round table set for four. She never entertains more than that: after decades of throwing large, complicated parties for diplomats abroad, when the couple moved to New York, Blair took one look at her new dining room and turned it into a library. “I’d rather give three dinners for four than one dinner for 24,” she notes. “It’s more interesting.”
On her table? An arrangement from Zeze Flowers (they moved an appointment to accommodate Mrs. Blair that morning), painted botanical sculptures, 18th-century Chinese export china (sourced from both Paris and Denmark), and bamboo flatware, all set upon a tablecloth woven in Guatemala. In between tales of dinner parties in Copenhagen and wearing Christian Lacroix straw hats in Paris, Blair encourages us to wait for the moonlight to better illuminate our photographs. Then, she goes to her dining-room-turned-library to smoke. Anyone is welcome to join her.
Clare de Boer
Clare de Boer answers the door to her Park Slope townhouse wearing a button-down and no makeup. Her five-year-old son, Abraham, clutches her hand, before offering me a cookie and leading me into the dining room, where a cherry table is set with great beauty but little fuss. White dinner plates sit on woven placemats by Rush Matters and are flanked by classic David Mellor sterling silverware. At the head of the table sits an arrangement of winter greens. “Whatever is growing and abundant in December should be what we’re eating and we’re cutting. There are no flowers in December except for poinsettias,” de Boer says. Then, she gestures toward a basket of red onions. “I think of red onions as a Christmas ball of December.”
It’s that hyper-seasonality that has made de Boer famous: she’s a four-times James Beard Award-nominated chef for her restaurants King and Stissing House, both of which change their menus daily. When she sits at a table, she does so with the utmost practicality: those plates are not only dishwasher safe, but restaurant grade. (“You could throw one against the wall and it wouldn’t break,” she notes.) Her napkins are almost comically giant—reflective of life with three young children who need their laps covered when they eat. Abraham eagerly shows me how it covers his entire head.
That’s not to say her table is monastic. De Boer admits she’s a bit of a magpie—atop the butter plate is an eye-catching vintage shell-shaped salt dish. Plus, as she explains, it truly comes alive once the meal is served: “I’m always thinking about the food. I don’t like busy tables that get in the way of conversational eating.”
DeVonn Francis
Chef and Yardy World founder DeVonn Francis finds perennial inspiration in two seemingly opposing aesthetics: the moody bounties of Flemish paintings and the kaleidoscopic colors of his own Jamaican heritage. Yet across the table he set for Vogue—with its wildly arranged beach grasses, dates, and black tahini cakes with artfully swirled buttercream frosting—the inspirations effortlessly meld. “I want it to feel balanced and fun and festive,” he says.
Francis always aspires to achieve informal elegance when he entertains. Fine china and silver are broken out for even the most last-minute dinner parties with friends: “It’s silly, the rules we have around how we spend time together,” he says.“I think every day is special.” And despite being a traditionally trained chef, Francis also prefers to avoid formal courses when he’s cooking at home. “I love a family-style moment,” he says, smiling.
Romilly Newman
“This was the tablecloth that we used for every holiday when I was growing up,” Romilly Newman says from her Brooklyn apartment, pointing to a D Porthault linen with a green vine motif. After inheriting the heirloom from her grandmother, which she used during Thanksgiving and Passover, Newman took great care to build a dinnerware collection that compliments it: vintage vegetable-shaped napkins and silverware from Christofle, as well as taper candles that add an element of moodiness. Frequently, she arranges them all at different heights. “I wanted to still have that romance and watch the candles drip and deteriorate as the night goes on,” she says.
As a culinary stylist, flowers and food are always the focus of her table. In the center, you’ll find a floral arrangement made of green moss and purple calla lilies—“I just wanted these to grow out of the table almost,” she says of her blooms—while on a silver tray sits glacé fruits from Fortnum and Mason. Newman admits that, at first glance, her table might seem restrained. Yet, “it’s really about how the setting evolves over the night,” she adds. “I love the little stain on the tablecloth. I love the way that the food looks when you’re just serving yourself mountains of beautiful dishes. I love the way that people look around the table.”
