As the vice-presidential debate buzzed over the airways, a lower-stakes debate unfolded in Brooklyn. Adam Brody: cute, hot or handsome?
On Tuesday night, surrounded by tea candles, Sarah Pierson and Alexa Buckley Roussel, the co-founders of the footwear line Margaux, and Matilda Goad, the England-based housewares designer and founder of the namesake brand, Matilda Goad & Co, hosted an intimate dinner party in a Park Slope brownstone to announce their new collaboration on a colorful ballet flat.
Mr. Brody had come up because the curated crowd of tastemakers — including the fashion writer Leandra Medine Cohen and the bridal stylist Anny Choi — had been discussing the new Netflix series “Nobody Wants This,” starring Kristen Bell and the heartthrob in question.
But it was the new edition of Margaux’s Demi Jane, a flat with the silhouette of a ballet shoe and the cross strap of a Mary Jane, that had brought together a tiny slice of New York’s vanguard of style and design. The lure of homey cuisine by Clare de Boer, the chef-owner at Stissing House in Pine Plains, N.Y., didn’t hurt either.
“As the brand has matured, and we’ve matured, and our taste has matured, we continue to design for ourselves,” Ms. Pierson said.
As the story goes, she and Ms. Buckley Roussel met at a taxi stand in Boston as freshmen at Harvard, became best friends and ditched their corporate job offers after graduating to start Margaux from a windowless office in SoHo.
They teamed up this year with Ms. Goad, known for her love of color. A display at the party’s entrance, where the shoes were fanned out on a table like a spread of assorted candies — in shades of blue, citron, pink and chocolate brown — showed off her vision.
In an era of splashy product launches and celebrity-studded brand kickoffs, this one was decidedly low key: Twenty women, mostly creative types, sitting down for dinner not in a restaurant’s dining room but at a private home. (Albeit, one with multiple fireplaces, hardwood floors and chandeliers dripping from the ceiling.)
Candles glittered on almost every surface in the room, casting a warm spell onto the evening.
“This is really our style,” Ms. Buckley Roussel said. “The more intimate, the better.”
In the parlor, over glasses of Rosso di Montalcino and San Pellegrino (mostly the latter, it was a Tuesday, after all), the group discussed babies (to have a third or not to have a third?) and creative branding.
The appetizers — curls of prosciutto and salami, spears of endive with herby crème fraîche, breadsticks arranged in a glass vase — remained statue-like in their meticulous arrangements, mostly untouched.
The makeup the guests wore was minimal, the conversations light. And though the vibe the digital directors, brand consultants and content creators projected was one of an aspirational Brooklynite, many had come in from Manhattan.
Others had traveled a bit further.
“It seems like there’s a big British table over here,” Ms. Goad, who lives in London, said, pointing to one of the two long tables, where a cohort of English creative types were seated.
A glance down to the floor revealed dozens of ballerina-flatted feet.
“I love a ballet flat because I was not a ballet girlie growing up,” the writer and former podcast co-host Aminatou Sow said. “Nothing in my trajectory would lead you to believe that I ever did ballet, and so it feels a little subversive to be a little coquet.”
The table was set with Matilda Goad cutlery and scalloped napkins, with minimalist white and yellow flower arrangements by the floral designer Rana Kim running through the center. French bistro-style menus doubled as place mats; miniature Polaroids with guests’ names punctuated each place setting.
“Enjoy one another’s company,” the Margaux co-founder Ms. Pierson said in a toast.
Over buttery honey nut squash-filled cappellacci for the first course, and herb-roasted chicken with lentils, carrots and Jerusalem artichoke for the second, the group discussed the failures of dating apps, the humbling pursuit of learning to speak another language and celebrity memoirs. Jessica Simpson’s? “Incredible,” Ms. Sow said, evangelizing the audiobook. Matthew McConaughey’s? A ploy to run for office, she posited.
Crackly cider-roasted apples with vanilla ice cream capped off the meal before a surprise encore dessert, chocolate cookies with sea salt, whisked to the table by Ms. de Boer.
As for Mr. Brody, the table was split between “cute” and “hot.”
But Ms. Sow warned the hospitality strategist Sue Chan: “If you watch ‘The O.C.,’ you’re at the age now when you’ll fall in love with the dad.”
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