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when it comes to spirits and food and design, more is always more. i’m a maximalist!” whimsical element. How do you feel about paper plates? I think the most important thing is to bring people together. That’s why we put all this effort and care into entertaining. If you can go the extra mile and set the table with nice plates, do it. If it’s too much trouble, why not get the paper plates? But if you’re going to get paper plates, pick pretty ones. Caspari has beautiful blue and white paper plates, and you can buy them on Amazon Prime. What’s your cocktail strategy? When it comes to spirits and food and design, more is always more. I’m a maximalist! I like white sangria with blueberries and strawberries in a pretty glass pitcher. If you’re mixing cocktails all day, you’re going to get overwhelmed. Help us with conversation topics! I love to ask people their favorite type of
fireworks—I prefer the willowy kind—but some people like the dotty kind. It’s a silly question, but it reveals a lot about someone’s personality. How did you get into the entertaining world? Every Friday night during my childhood, we would have a really big dinner, and my mom would create an amazing meal and tablescape. The feeling of warmth and love that I felt as a result of those meals resonated. When I was in high school, I lived in France, and from that point on I knew I wanted to work with food. I’m really interested in the art of entertaining, so I love to host dinner parties, and I try to bring the style of an intimate dinner party into the events I cater. What’s your background? I grew up in Westchester and moved
to France when I was 16. I just knew that was the gastronomic capital of the world, and I had to go. Then I went to college at Columbia, and I put all my classes on two days of the week and worked in restaurants on the other days, so that really gave me a lot of cooking experience. After college, I worked for about a year and a half and then went to culinary school at ICC in Soho, where I studied professional culinary arts. How did you start your own business? I started hosting dinners in my first apartment in New York—a little shoebox full of art. After college, I started doing these art-inspired dinners, and that grew into what is now Victory Club. Victory Club is a roving supper club that hosts art-inspired meals in spaces all over the world—galleries, museums, and artists’ homes. I create meals that are either conceptually or visually inspired by the art in each space. I launched my own line of baking sheets in 2016 and now ship them all over the world, from Saudi Arabia to Tennessee. It’s just amazing to see on social media what people do with the sheets. You can apply them on donuts, croissants, anything chocolatecovered, cookies, cakes, strudels, you name it! It’s really exciting.
How many sheets do you feature? I have eight on my website right now, and I designed all of them. I’m also an artist. I do a lot of custom art and work with a lot of fashion brands on custom cakes. I recently did the wedding cake for Tabitha Simmons and Topper Mortimer, and I once did a cake for a bridal shower that was based on a Zimmermann dress. I’ve worked with Veuve Clicquot, Uniqlo, Brooks Brothers, Tory Burch, Samsung, and Sam Edelman. You’ll be out East for the rest of the season? Yes. This summer I’m catering in the Hamptons, and I’m doing a cake pop-up at the Green Thumb in Water Mill on August 18th. Where do you want to see your business go? I just want to do a lot more of what I’m doing. I would love to do a cookbook, more on-air segments, more campaigns with brands, dinner series, and editorial content. I’d love my own show! Why do dinner parties matter? Next to a dinner party, I don’t know what else really matters. It’s all about coming together and sharing and enjoying a meal with people you want to spend time with.
nass’ dress: luisa beccaria
sweets and stripes Chefanie’s American flag cake is the centerpiece of the table.
FA S H I O N W E E K D A I LY. C O M