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    The Swell Dressed Party
    The Swell Dressed Party
    The Swell Dressed Party
    Ebook205 pages2 hours

    The Swell Dressed Party

    By Cynthia Rowley and Ilene Rosenzweig

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    About this ebook

    The bestselling authors of Swell: A Girl's Guide to the Good Life, Home Swell Home: Designing Your Dream Pad, and Swell Holiday: Turning Up the Twinkle have delighted readers with their groundbreaking manuals on style and decor. Now Cynthia Rowley and Ilene Rosenzweig bring you The Swell Dress Party, a bubbly bible for the modern hostess.
    With their fun-loving spirit and entertaining expertise, they serve up ideas for memorable affairs that are easy to execute, don't leave you exhausted, and allow you to achieve the ultimate hostess goal -- to be a guest at your own party.
    This day-to-night guide brings a much-needed dose of realism to fabulous entertaining. The confident hostess makes the most of what she's got, mixing homemade with store-bought, pairing her best crystal flutes with last minute Polaroid placecards, and knowing it's important to keep the conversation as sparkling as the champagne.
    "Part Dressing" is a new approach to great entertaining that relies on playfulness, not perfectionism. Over twenty parties in this book combine recipes that deliver wow factor without requiring a culinary PH.D., and anecdotes from Rowley and Rosenzweig's party career. They show how to bring friends and family together for high-style good times without spending an obscene amout of time or blowing a wad of dough.
    The Swell motto is: Minimize effort and maximize fun. Great hostessing is about setting a mood as much as making sure people get enough to eat and drink. A Swell party is like the perfect black dress glammed up with little accessories that make a big impact.
    Double-duty favors that bring an activity to the party, like sketchbooks and charcoals at everyy place setting.
    Iced gel-eye masks and Tylenol for a Hangover Brunch.
    Filling the pool with blow-up ducks as an aquatic centerpiece.
    The No-Time-for-Dinner Party, ordering in every course, from MacDonald's fries to steakhouse sirloins, and making an event of every delivery.
    Turning Games Night or Must-See TV into a weekly ritual of three-martini playdates.
    Keeping the cupboard stocked for chic-and-easy bar snack and canapes for the impromptu cocktails.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAtria Books
    Release dateJun 22, 2010
    ISBN9781416506850
    The Swell Dressed Party
    Author

    Cynthia Rowley

    Cynthia Rowley is an acclaimed fashion designer. 

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      Book preview

      The Swell Dressed Party - Cynthia Rowley

      the Swell           

      dressed party

      Other books by Cynthia Rowley and Ilene Rosenzweig:

      Swell: A Girl’s Guide to the Good Life

      Home Swell Home: Designing Your Dream Pad

      Swell Holiday

      1230 Avenue of the Americas

      New York, NY 10020

      www.SimonandSchuster.com

      Copyright ©2005 by Cynthia Rowley and Ilene Rosenzweig

      All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Atria Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

      Photography by Lee Clower

      Design by Chandler Tuttle

      Illustration by Chico Hayasaki/CWC International, Inc. (http://www.cwc-i.com)

      ISBN: 0-7434-4278-4

      eISBN: 978-1-4165-0685-0

      First Atria Books hardcover edition May 2005

      10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      ATRIA BOOKS is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

      For information regarding special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-800-456-6798 or business@simonandschuster.com

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      To Diego, a born Swell party boy.

      Enormous thanks to the Swellest guys we know—

      design genius Chandler Tuttle, sharpshooter Lee Clower,

      as well as big daddies Rick, Bill and our agent David.

      Contents

      Introduction

      The Imperfect Hostess: Nobody Does It Better

      Chapter 1: Early Birding

      Breakfasts, Brunches, Morning-Afters

      Chapter 2: Seize the Day

      Picnics, BBQs, Showers

      Chapter 3: Cocktail Parties

      How Did All These People Get into My Room?

      Chapter 4: Burn, Baby, Burn

      Dinner Parties

      Chapter 5: Keep-It-Happy

      Birthdays

      Chapter 6: Get-Togethers

      Games Night, Book Clubs, Viewing Parties

      Chapter 7: Blowouts

      New Year’s to Bachelorettes

      Recipes

      The Imperfect Hostess

      Nobody Does It Better

      Hostessing is a high-wire act, filled with thrills and spills. You’re performing for a lot of people. Everyone’s watching. The expectation is to do it flawlessly. But the secret is, no one really wants that. If an acrobat prances gaily along the wire, she’ll get a round of soft applause. But for the big bravos, you need that…misstep that makes the audience gasp with anticipation to see how—and if—she’ll recover her stride. Only then does the crowd offer their thunderous cheers and a standing O.

      The party paradox at the heart of this book is that the Imperfect Hostess is not a renunciation of elegant entertaining but a return to it.

      At least that’s the rationalization of the Swell Hostess. Her party fantasy life is not filled with per-fec-tly seared filets of beef. The Imperfect Hostess reaches her entertaining heights with twin mottos: can-do and make do. On either end of her balance pole are the homemade cake and camouflaged takeout, the fine china and a snip-and-rip tablecloth. She works fast and loose, mixes high and low, and doesn’t worry about having the exact equipment. A wheelbarrow in the backyard makes for a great roving bar, champagne flutes excellent bud vases–and vice versa. She can deal with disaster–with her charm and wits. If the soufflé is teetering dangerously, she’s got the Good Humor truck on speed dial–and can sweet-talk the driver into swinging by for an emergency dessert lift.

      A party at its best is a place to be a little larger than life—funnier, prettier, bawdier—and the Swell hostess at her best sets the stage for her guests to try a few high-wire moves of their own.

      The party paradox at the heart of this book is that the Imperfect Hostess is not a renunciation of elegant entertaining but a return to it. Other books show their model party planners mid-craft, rolling origami napkins, or in the garden plucking lemon verbena, but never at her own party shaking up fun. Yet a swell hostess is neither caterer nor kitchen drudge. Her quick fixes and fast solutions free her up for oft-overlooked more glamorous hostess duties–looking dishy, spending time with guests, running to the basement for the pogo stick. She’s as crucial an element as the food and drink. So drop the denim work shirt and grab the tiara–even if it’s for a barefoot BBQ in the backyard.

      The Imperfect Hostess knows that the key to throwing parties with maximum style and minimum stress is having a focus. Not trying to be all things to all people. A Swell party is like a diamond, albeit in the rough. No two are exactly alike. The secret is making one thing great. A bartender flaming cocktails. The swimming pool brimming with beach balls. Pickup lines being passed with the hors d’oeuvres. You looking like a billion greeting guests with a magnum of champagne in hand and a Polaroid camera around your neck.

      The ticket to making a party colorful is not necessarily a big labor-intensive theme, 1001 Moroccan Nights! Just give ’em something to remember. And find inspiration in your limitations. It can just be that you don’t have a dining room table in the new apartment yet, or that the backyard’s a dump, or you have no time to cook. That’s when you come up with the big ideas: cardboard boxes pushed together as a banquet table with tulips in the paint cans—the Not-Yet-Moved-In dinner party no one will forget.

      The Swell definition of a party is life elevated. And it can happen at any time of night or day. The parties in this book go from a morning tag-sale brunch to a bachelorette blowout that could last till daybreak again. A Swell hostess is an equal opportunity partier, looking for ways to amp up the biggies–birthdays, showers—and celebrate small everyday occasions, too—a hangover brunch, adding a touch of swellegance to must-see TV night, or indulging an après-party impulse to invite everyone back to your place, even if it means claiming it was the maid’s day off.

      For the big bravos, you need that… misstep that makes the audience gasp with anticipation to see how—and if—she’ll recover her stride.

      Whatever her shortcomings, The Imperfect Hostess shines at the party skills that matter most: loosening people up and drawing them out. To that end, she puts her energy and charm into sparking conversation and fanning flirtage, and she is not above whipping out enough games and activities for a five-year-old’s birthday. Anything to make the bad times good and the good times unforgettable. A party at its best is a place to be a little larger than life—funnier, prettier, bawdier—and the Swell hostess at her best sets the stage for her guests to try a few high-wire moves of their own.

      Now which way’s the bar? This drink’s getting warm.

      Ahhh, brunch—the ultimate Sunday luxury. Q-time to spend decompressing with friends, chitchatting gaily over flutes of mimosas, waiting lazily for the eggs Benedict to materialize. Who can sit still that long? Some of us can never really relax into a Bloody Mary stupor without a welling dread of the day slipping away—there are places to go, newspapers to read, cartoons to watch. The Swell remedy for the ADD hostess is to marry brunch with a morning activity you’d want to do anyway. Just because it’s a party doesn’t mean you can’t accomplish something!

      Tasty Tag Sale

      Get rid of your old junk and hang out with friends while waiting for customers, some of whom might even be cute and single or have kids the same age as yours. Besides, why not make some dough instead of just eating it?

      Invite

      This is one party where you can’t have too many guests. We evited friends to set up a boutique and sell their own stuff—or just browse and breakfast. Then we put our energy into making new friends by posting notices on trees and electrical poles advertising our tag sale and muffin tasting.

      Simply offering food and drink elevates the tag sale to party status.

      Setup

      To make your event more guest-friendly than the typical junkyard sale, organize the merch into boutiques spread out over the whole yard so there are different places to browse and hang out. Best to get a head start the night before, since the hitch to this party is that it starts early. The hard-core tag-salers will be at your door ready to inspect your wares at the crack of dawn.

      We created a living room from the bookshelves, reading chair, lamps and games for sale. Sales tables covered with cloths or bedding gave the yard a more soignée vibe, and helped sell the sheets faster. We dragged the stereo-for-sale to the stoop and cranked tunes. Cynthia figured out a way to display all the clothes and shoes in our fashion boutique without a rack of any kind just using a single oak tree: sweaters on hangers on the boughs, shoes around the roots, bags and hats thumbtacked into the bark and a full-length mirror leaned against the trunk. This was one occasion when Ilene’s bad habit of wearing clothes with the price tag hanging off the back came in handy.

      Sips and Nibbles

      Simply offering food and drink elevates the tag sale to party status. Even the most minimal refreshments awe strangers and friends with your gracious hostessing and genius marketing strategy.

      Lemonade Squeeze: Cynthia figured out a way to move a difficult item: single, unmatched glasses. We loaded a table with everything from a lone Austrian crystal flute to a Snoopy tumbler, and a sign: FREE LEMONADE! (GLASSES $1) Ilene made pitchers accessorized with strawberry or basil for added value.

      Jammin’ Muffins: It seemed tacky, even for a Swell girl with her mind on her money, to resell donuts and croissants from Sam’s Club, though the margins were good and it did cross our minds. So for eats we went with a breakfast bake sale theme, a table of semi-homemade muffins and breads. We loaded up on those five-for-a-dollar mixes and, to make the corn muffins less dry, turned them into Jelly Muffins by filling the muffin tins halfway with mix, then adding a dollop of preserves before pouring in the rest of the batter. The other treat was Yard Sale Banana Bread, an old family recipe from Ilene’s health-food childhood baked in two super long (18-inch) bread pans that, when laid end to end, were as long as a—yardstick. For good measure, we laid a yardstick beside the bread for customers, or guests, to help themselves: a dollar an inch.

      Action

      We could have made more money. But the sale took on gale force by eight in the morning. And we were still wandering around in a need-coffee coma, half dressed, our boutiques bare, no food out, and so much for our plan to put cute price stickers on the items with little product details. Prada pumps ($3), excellent for chasing buses in Milan.

      So we improvised what to charge on the spot and learned we had some very different retail strategies. Cynthia followed a fire-sale plan of unloading everything with prices that were, like New York retailer Crazy Eddie used to say, in-sane. Ilene had a reverse-snobbery philosophy that people want to spend more so they think they’re getting better value. Cynthia proudly showed up with $30 saying she’d sold ten rugs. Ilene raised her eyebrows;

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