Forget 5 course meals at your local Nobu – dinner parties chez toi are all the rage. In a time where we’re worried about who and what we’re connecting with (I’ll pass on the flu this year, thank you very much), dinner parties could be the solution to A) Selecting who you want to expose yourself to and B) Connecting with real life human beings after lockdown – and human beings you like, too!
Not only can you pick and choose your dinner guest list, but you can choose what hours you dine, where you dine, and what you eat for dinner… (except, you have to make it.)
It’s not only a healthier way to break bread, but also is a deeper way to make human connection. Those who prep together, cook together, eat together, stay together.
You no longer have to get the drunk Uber home; you can either pass out in your own bed after too many bottles of Chateauneuf-du-Pape, or you can crash at your friend’s place – they won’t mind! After all, you just helped them prep for dinner, and do the dishes post-mortem. The least they can do is offer you a couch to sleep on and a boiled egg in the morning!
Camille Charrière certainly thinks that dinner parties are the way to go, with her newest article in Harper’s Bazaar detailing her tips française for hosting the most exciting dinner party (Cheese is essential? Yes please).
For Australia Fashion Week, Maggie Marilyn not only hosted two dinner parties for her MM aficionados – one in Aussie, and one in her native New Zealand – but also created a wild and carefree video to show off her new collection – one that focused on connecting around a dinner table on an endless summer evening (wearing Maggie Marilyn of course!)
Not only did it encompass the freedom and dreaminess of her clothing, set in an undulating garden stretching far and wide, but it also evoked her brand ethos – one where she connects with every woman, by empowering them through graceful and earth-loving clothing. The film short illustrated that wearing MM clothing is a sisterhood: We are all different and all-encompassing women, but we can all sit down at a dinner table and connect with each other over our love for the earth (Papatūānuku) and our love for beautiful clothes.
If anything the pandemic has unearthed apart from the governmental neglect of universal healthcare, is our natural desire for human connection. Yes, after months of cooking our own meals do we want someone to cook for us, and make yummy food that we can somehow never achieve in our own kitchens; but more than anything, we want to sit down with those whom we love the most, and share a meal with them. The most simple and meaningful way to connect as a species – by sharing food.
I want to spoil my home, and expand my measly collection of placemats. I want to try and perfect new recipes, so I can make them confidently and sit down and eat a meal that I made for the people I love, in my own home full of beautiful things, in a place where I belong.
I think 2021 is a year of human connection; and this year we are going to connect in a way we only know how: by inviting those we love into our abodes, and offering them sustenance, so that they can go on their way with full bellies and with the knowledge that they are not alone, and that somewhere, there will always be a plate full of steaming, hot food, waiting for them upon a table.
Image by @indg0 on Instagram