[gentle lilting music]
[tablecloth whooshing] - Behold!
The dining room table.
She's cute.
It's the holidays, it's her big day.
I'm an interior designer,
and I'm gonna walk you through how to decorate this table.
I've put together three different tablescapes,
and I'm going to show you
how to achieve those three different looks.
[gentle lilting music continues]
[page flapping] [classic music]
[items popping]
[tablecloth whooshing]
Say you've inherited your grandmother's silverware.
We're gonna build a look around the silverware.
This whole set is giving for me
just iconic, super ornamental traditional.
Silver is a live finish.
A living finish is one where the actual surface
is going to change with exposure to oxygen
or exposure to different surfaces
and chemicals in our environment.
She's alive, y'all, she's changing.
So the next tip is developing a color palette.
I wanna build around a tartan tablecloth.
Tartan to me is iconic holiday.
It's red in this case,
and it's so nubby, and the wool is so cozy,
and everything about it is just festive to me.
We have this really traditional China.
I'm deciding between this patterned and this white.
The thing is that I wanna do holiday,
and I wanna do traditional holiday,
and this patterned China clashes with the tartan,
and that means white plates.
[page flapping]
[tablecloth whooshing] [soft music]
Generally speaking, when you fold something,
you're gonna get creases.
You can run the crease
along where the table edge is, and no one will ever know.
Generally, once something has dried crinkled,
you need to get it a little bit damp
in order to be able to smooth this out.
The wetness gets the creases out
because basically if it has dried in a certain direction,
you need something that allows the fabric to reshape itself.
And it's not perfect.
Not everything's perfect.
We're not perfect.
We're humans.
We're beautifully imperfect, so we're just gonna let her be,
and you'll never know the difference.
[air whooshing] [page flapping]
We're going for a traditional table setting,
and there are so many old-school rules about it.
In fact, there are even entire books
that teach you all the ways that you are doing things wrong.
First, to indicate where the chairs go,
I'm gonna choose either a charger or a place mat.
Since I want my white plates to stand out,
I'm gonna go with the charger.
We're doing just a dinner plate and a salad plate.
We also have a butter plate,
and that's gonna go to the left.
[page flapping] When it comes to silverware,
it's pretty much outside in, what do you eat with first.
Salad starts, and then we have entree,
so that means that the salad is on the outside.
It's also the baby fork, so things kind of get bigger
and taller as they go toward the plates.
Spoon, and then your entree knife.
Blades always go toward your plates.
[page flapping] I love a white napkin
for a traditional table setting.
It is connoting of cleanness.
There's lots of different ways to handle the napkin.
You can have it just folded
and placed neatly on top of your plates.
You can also put the napkin under your silverware,
but I personally love a ring.
I love a ring.
You take a square napkin, you fold it into a triangle,
and then you basically roll it almost like a croissant,
I don't know, I've never baked,
and then you put the ring over it.
It allows you to have kind of a dramatic
and long napkin experience.
That's very important for my guests, napkin experiences.
The reason I like doing it this way
is there's a beautiful symmetry
that you create on the table.
[page flapping] Next up, glassware.
In a traditional place setting,
there is a different glass for every drink.
Red wine and white wine glasses are shaped differently
because red wines generally have a much larger bouquet
and take a bit more time and more oxygen to wake up.
You can either form the glasses in a linear fashion,
or in a grouping.
If you're serving champagne,
you can choose between a coupe, and a flute,
but for today, we're gonna use the flute.
We actually need to get rid of this coupe glass.
[glass twinkling]
We have a lot of centerpiece options here.
I love fruit for a centerpiece
because one, it's very seasonal,
it connotes freshness, and you can make it colorful.
Fruit's colorful.
Here we wanna make sure that all of our metals are matching,
so there's lots of options to choose from in silver.
And between these two candle stakeholders,
I think I'm gonna go with the individual candlesticks,
and the reason for that
is because then I can have it sit
one on either side of my fruit dish.
Another pro tip, non-scented candles, very important.
If you get a fragrance candle,
it will compete with the smell of the food on the table.
[creator exhaling]
Choices.
We're gonna go with this one.
It's cute.
I love the idea that the salt
and the sugar were part of the same set.
A lot of traditional dishware comes in a set.
And then don't forget a water pitcher.
This is very adorable, and it's kind of fun.
I love that it's a squiggle squangle,
it almost feels like the inverse of my candlestick.
The one thing about a centerpiece is don't make them so tall
whether they're florals, whether they're fruit.
If it's too tall, I can't see you from across the table.
So that's traditional.
[lively music]
[dainty music]
[elements popping]
[tablecloth whooshing]
Traditional was very much about pulling from sets.
The salt and pepper shakers matched with the sugar
which matches with the plates.
On the flip side, mix and match is the art
and science of adoring an entire table
or a tablescape with lots of items that go together,
and feel like they make sense together,
but they're not all part of the same set.
[page flapping] As a jumping off point,
one of the things that we can do is starting with a menu.
Design your tablescape
around what you're gonna serve that night.
I personally love designing around shared food.
I love a family-style meal
where things are coming off of big bowls,
big pots on the table,
and then everyone sort of serves themselves,
and that's what we're gonna do today.
When I'm starting a modern table setting,
I do think about the tablecloth first.
It is sort of the foundation
of everything that goes on top of it.
I went with a neutral tablecloth,
because I want everything else to really stand out.
Each of these modern options for place mats
are pretty bold and fabulous.
What I love about texture and design
is that it allows you to not have to rely only on color
and pattern to make something visually interesting.
This is both experientially lovely because you can touch it,
and it's fun, and it's also a way to stay neutral,
but still be interesting.
All three of these place mats are so much fun.
I love this one for a more mellow, neutral overall vibe,
I love the energy of this pattern,
but I'm thinking that I really like is translucent one
for all of my very special friends who are very messy
and like to spill.
[page flapping] Now we're choosing napkins.
I like to use cloth napkins instead of paper napkins
because it's more luxurious, it's more lovely,
and permanent, and nice, and also it's sustainable.
If you're serving great food, you wanna make sure
that every part of what your guests touch is fantastic.
A tip for how to choose your napkins,
take the material and rub it against the inside of your arm,
not your fingertips, but the inside of your arm.
If it's too scratchy here,
you're gonna hate wiping your face with it.
I'm gonna choose this one.
I love how the purple
works off of all the other colors I have going on so far.
[page flapping] Now we're choosing dinnerware.
When shopping for modern dishware,
look for handmade, look for the craftsmanship,
and, in fact, sometimes you'll even see bowls
where the finger from the pottery wheel is shown.
These plates are both very modern, very neutral,
but very different.
I'm gonna choose the stoneware.
I like that very much for what I'm going to be serving,
and I love how the colors
are all playing with one another right now.
I'm also going to bring in a menu and a place card.
[place card ringing]
If you're hosting a dinner party
where people might not know each other,
I always like to put the name on both sides
so that everyone knows where they're sitting,
and everyone knows who they're sitting across from.
Also a great tip
if you don't remember people's names very easily.
Who's Maria?
Not me.
[page flapping] So now drinkware.
You might think of drinkware as clear,
but actually there's a long,
and fabulous history of translucent, colored drinkware.
Colorful drinkware actually has a very
interesting history starting with depression glass.
That was a way to distinguish from crystal,
as we saw before.
There were different colors.
In fact, even neon green made with uranium.
She was radioactive, and she still is.
Isotopes last forever.
I actually love this amber glass,
but I already know that we're going to be using
this amber decanter, and that's too matchy.
We're mixing!
I'm gonna pick this smoked gray.
To be totally honest, there's so many times
that I break or my friends break my stemware,
or my glasses, and that's okay.
As long as things are mix and match,
and something breaks, it's not a big deal,
because it already didn't match with anything else.
[book thumping]
Ma'am?
Maria is back, y'all.
She's pissed.
[page flapping] And next, serveware.
Serveware is such a good centerpiece, because it's casual,
and it's about everyone sharing from the same vessel.
Since we're serving pasta,
I love the idea of the pasta being placed on the table
in the pot it was cooked in, rather than the florals
or a fruit bowl being the star of the show,
the food is the star of the show.
And it also has the same kind of texture
as the erthenware plates that we're going with.
I'm gonna serve my salad in this pink bowl.
I also really love mixing metals in a modern table setting.
So this is brass,
and then we've actually got silver silverware on the table.
I love a tiny bowl and a tiny ramekin.
Anytime you're gonna serve anything that comes in a package,
take it out of the packaging and put it in an actual dish.
A few of these items I actually picked up from my travels,
and that's such a nice way to share your travel experiences
with guests.
Another lovely thing to do
is to pour your wine into a decanter, and serve it there.
And since we're serving wine at the table,
how about a really fun cork screw?
I don't know how to use it.
Somebody else opens my wine for me, but it's really cute.
[page flapping] When I'm styling,
I really like candles that are kind of fun.
Funny textures are really fun.
This is very clearly a mix and match.
You've got clear glass with colorful glass,
different textures, shiny and glossy,
and all kinds of berries and nuts all over the table.
[playful music]
Next, I'm gonna show you all
what it feels like to fully commit to a theme.
[joyful holiday music] [items popping]
[tablecloth whooshing]
And this theme is Christmas.
Kitsch to me is humor at the table and in decor.
Just in general,
kitsch is a way for you to be able to be tacky,
but on purpose and with style.
I'm sorting centerpiece first this time.
There's a lot going on on this table.
Lot of different centerpiece ideas that are possible.
In general,
things in a bowl are very iconic to a centerpiece.
You could put lemons in a bowl,
ornaments in a bowl, wine corks, pine cones,
seashells that you found on vacation.
Bringing the outdoors in, especially in the wintertime,
thinking of things like this lovely stump slice.
And another thing,
when you're shopping for a Christmas tree,
you can always grab some of the extra branches, the baws,
and lay them out on the table as another centerpiece.
I'm definitely going to choose Señor Nutcracker.
I like that guy.
I like this because it's another checker element.
I have to go with an element of cabbageware,
so I'm gonna choose this lemon bowl.
Cabbageware is a vintage item that just keeps resurfacing.
It's funny, sparkly, and delightful.
Literally looking like a cabbage.
I'm really excited about this place setting.
Remember this patterned China?
I think it looks really good over this gold charger,
over this red tablecloth.
And since there's a lot going on in this tablescape,
we've got more of a simple, minimalist glassware,
but it's still in a really modern and playful silhouette.
We're also mixing metals aggressively at this table.
We've got silver flatware, we have a gold charger,
we have gold rim patternware,
and then we also have these funny,
little snowman-shaped silver salt and pepper shakers.
And it wouldn't be a kitsch Christmas
without a kitsch Christmas tree napkin holder.
How cute is that?
The other thing you can do with kitsch
is have super themed paper napkins.
And I love a name card
that can actually be a cute little party favor to take home.
And it's so cute.
This table setting is super kitsch, it's very Christmas,
it's very pattern-heavy, and it's funny,
like I wanna sit at this table,
and have a funny dinner with funny friends, and laugh.
[creator laughing]
I hope what you take away from this video
is that anything that you have totally belongs on the table.
Just think about what you wanna share with your friends
and loved ones.
Anything goes, nothing's too serious.
And if it's feeling too serious,
remember that any of the rules of traditional, modern,
or kitsch are just guideposts.
You really can't go wrong.
It's really about food and company
and sharing good meals with good loved ones,
and everything else is just design.
[joyful music]