What do you think?
Rate this book
Deeda Blair: Food, Flowers, & Fantasy
Style icon and preeminent hostess Catherine “Deeda” Blair shares her inspirations for entertaining with understated elegance and distinction, accompanied by menus, recipes, table settings, and charming stories about her extraordinarily colorful life.
Deeda Blair is one of the last great American swans, revered by cult followers for her enduring beauty, fashion taste, and easy elegance. She embodies a sense of decorum and practices a relaxed, graceful etiquette that is much lauded but often missing from today’s soirées and gatherings.
An invitation to Blair’s New York home has been a rare privilege, but now, in her first book, Blair invites readers in and reveals how they too can develop their own uniquely personal style. Central to the narrative are six fantasy meals, each accompanied by a menu, recipes, table settings, and floral arrangements that are inspired by the people and places that have shaped Blair’s own inimitable and envied taste and style. Each meal is set in Blair’s exquisite home and is accompanied by photographer Ngoc Minh Ngo’s evocative images of the imaginative table settings Blair has created for her timeless dishes. Accompanying Blair’s coveted eighty recipes are personal anecdotes and helpful serving suggestions. Renowned design writer and tastemaker Deborah Needleman collaborated closely with Blair to capture her vision for entertaining with fantasy and enchantment, as well as her reflections on life and how her experiences have influenced the way she lives, works, and entertains.
Deeda Blair is one of the last great American swans, revered by cult followers for her enduring beauty, fashion taste, and easy elegance. She embodies a sense of decorum and practices a relaxed, graceful etiquette that is much lauded but often missing from today’s soirées and gatherings.
An invitation to Blair’s New York home has been a rare privilege, but now, in her first book, Blair invites readers in and reveals how they too can develop their own uniquely personal style. Central to the narrative are six fantasy meals, each accompanied by a menu, recipes, table settings, and floral arrangements that are inspired by the people and places that have shaped Blair’s own inimitable and envied taste and style. Each meal is set in Blair’s exquisite home and is accompanied by photographer Ngoc Minh Ngo’s evocative images of the imaginative table settings Blair has created for her timeless dishes. Accompanying Blair’s coveted eighty recipes are personal anecdotes and helpful serving suggestions. Renowned design writer and tastemaker Deborah Needleman collaborated closely with Blair to capture her vision for entertaining with fantasy and enchantment, as well as her reflections on life and how her experiences have influenced the way she lives, works, and entertains.
256 pages, Hardcover
Published November 1, 2022
1 person is currently reading
126 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 15, 2023
It's rare these days to find an oversized book so beautifully put together, with a unique cloth cover and a satin bookmark. The photography is exquisite, but the rooms feel cold--a predominance of white, light blue and gray. Everything shown, for the most part, is removed from the ordinary public. The rare French Apt ceramics going for $200+ a plate these days, hand-painted or printed fabrics at "x" amount per yard for her curtains and table cloths. It's certain different from her much photographed Foxhall Road home in Washington, D.C. Rather like stepping into a grand salon in Sweden with a heavy French influence.
I wonder about the family money from her side and her late husband's side of the family. With the staff then and now needed to maintain these exquisite things "just so." How as a young woman she quickly befriended two of the richest women in the world and, I would add, benefitted from their largesse. I did enjoy her fantasy meals in rarified locales that most people would not be allowed to sit.
She writes of her heavy involvement with the sciences and healing, yet she still lives like a queen. Those social days of passing the quail eggs in their nests at cocktail party a distant memory. I do feel for the loss of her son. There are no easy solutions for that type of condition.
Very much a cocktail table book for your friends to idly peruse. She does have one odd habit I cannot figure out. In all of her table settings, she has the knife blade turned out, while it's almost a universal that the blade is turned in. I googled it again this afternoon, since I was taught "in," and it says repeatedly that blades out is seen as a "sign of aggression" to your guests. That the blade is "always in." Even dear creaky Emily Post agreed. I remember thinking "why?"
She is definitely a woman who knew her tastes early on and has stuck with it over the decades. The book is worth seeking out through a library system. Her friends will surely buy it. I'm not sure who else would sink $60 for this. I'd rather buy the exquisite oversized "The Glow of Paris: Bridges of Paris at Night." https://glz.com/the-book/
I wonder about the family money from her side and her late husband's side of the family. With the staff then and now needed to maintain these exquisite things "just so." How as a young woman she quickly befriended two of the richest women in the world and, I would add, benefitted from their largesse. I did enjoy her fantasy meals in rarified locales that most people would not be allowed to sit.
She writes of her heavy involvement with the sciences and healing, yet she still lives like a queen. Those social days of passing the quail eggs in their nests at cocktail party a distant memory. I do feel for the loss of her son. There are no easy solutions for that type of condition.
Very much a cocktail table book for your friends to idly peruse. She does have one odd habit I cannot figure out. In all of her table settings, she has the knife blade turned out, while it's almost a universal that the blade is turned in. I googled it again this afternoon, since I was taught "in," and it says repeatedly that blades out is seen as a "sign of aggression" to your guests. That the blade is "always in." Even dear creaky Emily Post agreed. I remember thinking "why?"
She is definitely a woman who knew her tastes early on and has stuck with it over the decades. The book is worth seeking out through a library system. Her friends will surely buy it. I'm not sure who else would sink $60 for this. I'd rather buy the exquisite oversized "The Glow of Paris: Bridges of Paris at Night." https://glz.com/the-book/
May 11, 2023
A view of a privileged and well-lived, interesting life. More of a scrapbook than anything else. Recommended for readers who enjoy coffee table luxury lifestyle monographs.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews