The Prince and Princess of Greece Opened up Their Tony Townhouse for a Book Party Celebrating AD at 100: A Century of Style

Yesterday evening, just a stone’s throw away from the Frick Collection, Architectural Digest editor in chief Amy Astley and Dior hosted an ineffably chic dinner to celebrate AD at 100: A Century of Style, released this month by Abrams. The book anticipates Architectural Digest’s centennial anniversary in 2020, gathering into one, attractive tome the most astonishing and inspiring homes ever to grace the publication’s pages. “So many stars of pop culture have welcomed AD into their private realms to examine their version of the well-lived life,” Amy Astley writes in her thoughtful introduction. “But, fun though they most certainly are, stars are only one piece of our mosaic. It really is the interior designers, architects, and landscape designers who guarantee that our pictures exude what I call the “wow factor” month after month.” Among the taste-making creatives who helped shape the book’s contents are the decorators Elsie de Wolfe, William Haines, and Renzo Mongiardino; and architects Richard Neutra and Frank Gehry—with the sorts of spaces that AD has featured growing ever more interesting and colorful over the decades. As Anna Wintour writes in her foreword, under Astley, who has been editor since 2016, the magazine has undergone a refreshing renovation. “Where one might have once called the magazine elegant and formal—possibly a little conservative—it now feels youthful and stylish and full of personality.… She’s let the light in.”

And where better to toast that evolution than chez Princess Marie-Chantal and Prince Pavlos of Greece? After the cocktail hour, which granted attendees a glance about the 106-year-old François Catroux–designed townhome’s stylish living room (featured in AD’s September 2019 issue), the party moved to the formal dining room, where a dinner of poached blue lobster and braised Wagyu beef au poivre was served. (Dior tapped the esteemed private chef Yann Nury to preside over the menu.) The well-heeled guests—who included the Prince and Princess (also a designer of an eponymous childrenswear line), their daughter Olympia (dressed, along with her mother and Astley, in Dior), Aerin Lauder, Nicky Hilton Rothschild, Vogue’s Hamish Bowles, Claiborne Swanson Frank, and Renaud de Lesquen, President and CEO of Dior North America—subsequently took dessert and coffee in the glossy, wood-paneled library, anchored on one end by a curvy Vladimir Kagan sofa. Signed copies of the book, naturally, made for sophisticated mementos.