Athena Calderone Suspended Flowers From the Ceiling at a Dinner Celebrating Her New Book

Last night, up the steps of the Cobble Hill home Athena Calderone shares with her husband, Victor, and her son, Jivan, and into her main-floor living room, brambles of wax flowers and branchy greenery hung from the ceiling. Below, tables were set with delightfully unpressed linens in a greige color scheme, Tiffany Home tableware, and the lighting came courtesy of candlelight. To say that this was an average night for Calderone isn’t such a stretch (the design influencer has built a following for her beauty-at-every-corner lifestyle), but the scene was set for a dinner to celebrate her latest book, Live Beautiful.

In attendance were the cohosts of the night, Architectural Digest’s Amy Astley and Jane Keltner de Valle, and a cultural-cool crowd including the likes of Jenna Lyons, Ulla Johnson, Wes Gordon, Paul Arnhold, Waris Ahluwalia, Sarah Hoover, and Nell Diamond. The night started off with a cocktail hour; Robert Mondavi wines were sipped, and a charcuterie board welcomed partygoers into Calderone’s kitchen to nibble family-style before dinner. And because this was a group of discerning tastes, the hostesses provided only the best when it came to the menu: a meal prepared by chef Ignacio Mattos (owner of Estela, Altro Paradiso, Flora Bar).

Everyone was having such a great time that it took a bit to herd the cats to dinner, but once seated they wondered why they had delayed the process—Mattos’s carpaccio, octopus, and fennel salad were spot on. Sometime between courses, Calderone rose to thank everyone in the room—among them, a few who had opened their doors to allow Calderone and her camera in for her beautiful book of interiors. “I just want to close by saying that, for me, everything that I do was discovered in the home,” she told her guests, “both the culinary aspect and the design aspect of my career. It started in the home. So being here in my home means everything to me.” It meant a lot to those she was addressing too: Some had only seen her townhouse via Architectural Digest and Instagram, and of course, it was even better in person.