Rebecca Gardner’s Recipe for a Great Party? Booze, Music, a Sense of Humor—and a Wad of Cash
The day is Thursday, maybe Friday, in Manhattan, and it’s early evening. Late summer, sultry. The week before, your phone had pinged with a text invite to a cocktail party at Rebecca Gardner’s Greenwich Village apartment. You’d only met her once, on an airplane. But the way she’d made that chance encounter sparkle inspired you to cut off work early and be here now, pulling open an ornate gold door on Fifth Avenue. That the 15-story prewar building began life as a hotel is fitting. Gardner is hospitality incarnate.
This welcoming spirit is why, just over a decade ago, at the age of barely 30, Gardner founded Houses & Parties, an events and interior design collective dedicated to her two greatest passions. Indeed, she so missed hosting during the pandemic that she added an e-commerce arm to her website, stocking it with anything “devotees of the elegant and unusual” might need for entertaining (and then some—as she likes to say, “I specialize in nonessentials”). When Gardner isn’t overseeing her 10-person firm and warehouse from her spacious home base in Savannah, Georgia, she’s here at her “teeny” pied-à-terre near Washington Square Park, staging parties for clients, or just for herself.
Bedroom
Rebecca Gardner’s apartment in a 1926 converted hotel in Greenwich Village was originally designed by Emery Roth. The custom bed canopy is in a Busatti linen with Samuel & Sons fringe, the antique Swedish chandelier is from John Derian, and the walls are painted in Churlish Green by Farrow & Ball.
Bedroom
A 19th-century Swedish chandelier from John Derian hangs in the bedroom, where the Art Deco rug is Chinese, and the lamps are by RH, Restoration Hardware.
Bed
The antique throw is by John Robshaw, and the pillowcases are by Léron Linens.
Sitting Area
Gardner re-covered her grandmother’s armchair and ottoman in a print by Cabana for Schumacher. The sconces are by CB2 with custom lampshades from Perrotine, the table lampshade is by KRB, and the artwork is by Henry Gadbois.
Living Room
Lavender walls contrast with saffron silk faille curtains. The 1830s portraits are of Gardner’s ancestors. The Louis XV daybed is in a Manuel Canovas fabric, the custom cocktail table is by Corbin Cruise, and the tole pendant is antique. The rug is from Stark, and the wall paint is Honey Hut by Benjamin Moore.
Living Room
in a corner with pale pink walls is a table with red legs and a glass top with books and two green ginger jar lamps on top, a black chair with leopard patterned seat, a large basket under the table, and a saffron rug
Bathroom
The wallpaper in the bathroom is by Happy Menocal for Schumacher, and the mirror and sconce are by Rejuvenation.
Rebecca Gardner
The homeowner and hostess in her living room, in a Carolina Herrera dress.
Entryway
An entry closet is now a bar with a slipcover in a Brunschwig & Fils fabric. The tray, lamp, ice bucket, and glassware are from Houses & Parties, and the Albertus Seba snake prints are from Peridot Antiques.
Table Setting
The antique Imari plates, glassware, and flatware are from Gardner’s Houses & Parties.
Getting off the elevator, you hear the hot, nostalgic strains of the band Pink Martini wafting down the hallway. The door is unlocked. Gardner greets you, smiling and cracking a joke, takes your bag, and sets it by the refrigerator. The word teeny has more letters than there are rooms in this apartment—just one little bedroom, a modest sitting area, and a kitchen so small you could blink and miss it. There is also a closet reimagined as a full bar, from which the bartender hands you a vintage crystal tumbler filled with the house drink, Earl Grey Bourbon Punch, icy cold.
When asked to describe the place, Gardner says without skipping a beat, “turn-of-the-last-century brothel with a really fabulous madam,” then adds, laughing, “it is, after all, the size of a nipple.” The sitting room is painted “dirty lavender,” the two windows dressed in “egg-yolky” silk faille, and the floor covered in paprika carpet. At sunset, “the room looks like it’s on fire, and you feel like a great-looking leg might kick out from the curtains at any moment,” she says. Gardner hung the somber oil portraits of distant Eggleston ancestors (the photographer William Eggleston is a cousin) because “the South Texas gilt frames are so serious that they’re hysterical.” On a night like this one, 40 guests happily mingle, elbow to elbow. For more formal seated dinners she unfolds a table for eight in the bedroom.
Gardner has staged events for as long as she can remember. Growing up in Corpus Christi, Texas, she planned her birthday parties all year long, piling on ideas until each year’s theme was more extravagant than the last, from “Pink Pigs, Green Frogs, BBQ Picnic Parade” to “Fashion Show Wedding,” which featured a local TV news broadcaster as M.C., friends stalking the catwalk (her parents’ driveway), and the birthday girl herself appearing at the end, a vision in white polyester.
Once a maximalist, always a maximalist, though over time Gardner has arrived at a few rules for her private fetes. Strong drinks, low lighting (“I avoid overhead lights like the plague”), simple and delicious foods (“never canapés—too fussy—just bar snacks and cheese puffs”), no paper napkins ever, and—above all—comfort. Also, per the late, great writer Julia Reed, an element of danger: pitchers of martinis for empty stomachs, or adding attractive single guests for a competitive game of “pass the orange.” Guest list? Come one, come all (she keeps a running list of potential invitees on her phone). And how does she take a measure of a party’s success? “When someone calls in the morning and tells me, ‘I had a screaming blast, I feel like hell,’” she says. Which happens every morning after, like clockwork.
Rebecca Gardner’s Party 101
Text Your Invite
“Instead of a printed invitation, I usually send invites by text. I use Hi-Note, a stylish messaging app, to send them. I’m always meeting people I want to invite. Come one, come all—that embodies New York City to me.”
Choose Your Evening
“I always host my parties on a Thursday or a Friday. People are more likely to let loose at the end of a workweek.”
Host with Finesse
“The real key to a party is to make sure guests are comfortable. That takes work. You need to make thoughtful introductions and help guests feel special, with drinks in their hands.”
Be Prepared
“Parties are live theater. I make sure to have enough booze and music, and a sense of humor in case something goes wrong. A wad of cash helps too.”
Nibbles to Noshes
“I don’t like canapés (too messy). I have all these French baskets, and I fill them with bar snacks, cheese, things like that. If guests linger, order pizza.”
This story originally appeared in the September 2023 issue of ELLE DECOR. SUBSCRIBE
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