kate spade new york’s all in good taste

note: this post will be written entirely in lowercase, following kate spade new york’s style of writing.

i managed to score a wonderful two-bedroom apartment with a friend for housing this september. we had a number of options available to us but ultimately decided that our desire to host apartment parties outweighed our desire to have spacious single rooms in a nicer building on campus.

and while i don’t think our apartment parties will be nearly as glamorous as i hope they will be, i realized that i had no clue how to actually throw a party. i mean, i’ve been to several. but i’ve never actually thrown one, nor really have i been to one that left me impressed with the efforts of the host, save for the one time i went to a friend’s birthday party and she spent the entire night mixing drinks for us to prepare for her bartending exam. not to say that i won’t ever throw a lazy, “here’s some booze let’s mingle and listen to music” parties, but i’d also like to throw a dinner party with food made exclusively from buzzfeed’s tasty videos.

so as i searched for guides to entertaining, i of course found the classics like emily post and martha stewart, but i also found kate spade new york’s all in good taste. i recognized the name kate spade, of course, as the wonderfully trendy and hip fashion brand and magazine, and knew it mostly as the brand my friend (a different one, not the one i’m living with) is obsessed with.

and for good reason, i generally think their items are well made and trendy, yet still with a mass appeal that perhaps some avant-garde fashion designers do not take into account. but i was skeptical that the brand could tell me something about entertaining. but despite my reservations, i decided to take a look, and was treated to a very unusual and postmodernist take not only to entertaining, but of the guide to entertaining itself.

many of the tips in the book flipped hierarchy on its head, suggesting, for instance, to pair a cheeseburger with wine, or to place (as one chapter is so titled) chinese food on fine china. other postmodernist tropes are also evident throughout: a pastiche of mediums, with hand written letters and words serving as proper text, wine stains and strange, colorful lettering; and an especially rich intertextuality drawing upon, of all things, virginia woolf’s mrs. dalloway, to show us one way to run a party. thomas pynchon’s the crying of lot 49 and v also both make an appearance as models of truly good parties.¹

ultimately the book’s unique style kept me coming back, even though i thought many of the ideas were outlandish: kate spade, right at the opening, suggests doing “one thing and do it en masse,” such as placing disco balls in every room or covering the ceiling with helium balloons; and then little things like float tea candles in the bathtub or write “hello gorgeous” in lipstick on the bathroom mirror. i, um, will not be writing anything in lipstick, but other suggestions were good, such as using the shower curtain rod as a coat check or having an “oh-shit” closet to put all your stuff in when unexpected guests arrive.

the book took on a decidedly new york character, too, though perhaps one a bit more self-pretentious than i would like. several references were made to decorating the walls, rather than the floors, and how tight living spaces can be. tips abound about how to make use of your limited floorspace and still throw a comfortable party despite the fact that your apartment barely cracks four hundred square feet.

though perhaps the most frustrating, but not unexpected, aspect of the book was how scattered everything was. there are several cocktail recipes and mentions about bar serving and etiquette, each placed in different sections, with only a few under the header of “bar.” perhaps it is just a testament to the new style of writing that eschews the categorical, item by item style of guides from earlier times. as a point for comparison, i read a 1950s betty crocker guide to entertaining, and indeed, it fits the point-by-point style i would have expected. but given that a central theme in entertaining is, at least according to kate spade, breaking expectations to make a fun time (there’s an entire chapter about this), it makes sense. beak traditions, kate spade tells us, and make your own.

there’s something to be said about the refreshing take kate spade takes. while it does come off as pretentious at times, and perhaps a bit too self-absorbed, the bold style encourages us to be bold in what we do. though my ideas have become emboldened, i think i’ll perhaps restrain myself a bit from what kate spade suggests, but if you’re looking to throw a good party, then perhaps this book could be worth a look, even if just to think about.

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• kate-spade-new-york
• american-nonfiction
• twenty-first-century-writing
• books