ABASK it: The Art of Entertaining with David Monn

The Art of Entertaining with David Monn

The interior and event designer shares his tips ahead of the summer season.

When it comes to creating the most intimate of ambiences, interior and event designer David Monn is the man at the top of everyone’s list to make it happen.

The author of The Art of Entertaining knows everything there is to know about how to create a personal experience that connects his guests on an individual level to the events he designs and hosts—both in the busiest of rooms and the coziest of corners. Monn’s MO rests on key tenets: authenticity, scale and detail, all driven by an insatiable curiosity to ensure each event is unique and guarantees the most thoughtful of times for all involved—not to mention the unexpected encounters such interaction invites.

Among the nuggets of wisdom he shares with ABASK is that one “must be curious, because when you're curious, you will see, and from seeing, you will create”; “rules are not restrictions, they're guidelines”; and 'if you sleep together, you do not sit together'. You should go home and speak of your evening."

With entertaining approaching its main-stage summer moment, what better time for Monn to share the ultimate guide to ensuring you’ve considered every important detail to make it personal to you and your guests? Here, he spotlights his summer entertaining tips for spaces small and large, plus the ABASK home-design pieces he's personally curated to help you bring the look home.

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"I adhere to the old saying, ‘if you sleep together, you do not sit together’. You should go home and speak of your evening."

David Monn

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Talk us through your non-negotiable summer entertaining items.

“I've often said that for a luxury product to be a luxury product it must be three things at all times: it must be qualitative, it must be consistent, and it must make a difference. And not two without the third. There are some fundamentals to entertaining that encapsulate this and are just beautiful. A napkin is a non-negotiable item because it touches your face. The minute I touch someone's napkin it tells me if the host really understands how to entertain. The way it's been laundered, has it been pressed? Has it not? These are little things, but they're huge, huge details. That may seem fancy and fussy, but it's just refined. If you pick up an olive with your fingers at a cocktail party, you shouldn't be wiping them on a piece of tissue. Everyone should have a proper cocktail napkin."

Anything else we should pay close attention to?

“A non-negotiable for me is a fine glass. When I'm serving wine at a dinner, I want it to be beautiful to my table, so I don't want cut crystal; it’s too thick, I want fine glass. Again, it's all about the things that touch your body. You touch a glass, you don't touch your plate. Yes, flatware matters, but a glass? When you pick it up and it touches your lips, a connection happens. A beautiful edge of a glass touching your lip is really beautiful. There are three glasses in the world that I would choose if I were choosing my favorites. One would be a NasonMoretti out of Venice and the others would be Lobmeyr and Moser. Individual salt and pepper cellars are very special things to have on the table. People often say that if you salt the food at the table, you're insulting the chef, well, that isn't what I want to be in question. I want someone to be comfortable with what they like and don’t like.”

How do we get the good light on the table?

“Light is probably the most important component to my work and my living—I actually think it's the most important component to everyone's living. Given the environments that we live in today, the light that we're in is more important than anything. I am a huge advocate against LED light. I only use incandescent light and candlelight at all of my events. I also use candlelight all the time, everywhere—mainly tea lights and large pillar candles in hurricane vases because they have a longer life to them. These are especially great for outside entertaining in the summer months.”

Where do you stand on introducing scent to entertaining and events?

“Without a question, I believe that experience happens by how we engage our senses and this is something that is rule 101 to every event I do. What can I smell? What do I hear? Then what do I see? It will happen in a split second of the people experiencing it. Smell is called ‘the penthouse of our senses’ as it is the single most important sense that transports people in a space above all else. I typically like a jasmine-based fragrance as I like a very light scent of white flower, and as I go to the winters I like something that has a little bit more of a pine feel to it, like a juniper scent.”

"The paperless post? Don’t even bring that up to me—I get apoplectic. A beautiful invitation is so much more personal."

David Monn

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How should we be laying our tables to ensure summer sophistication?

“I think that a table is all about the people and therefore you need to think that a place setting at a table is a person. The space that a person needs from one place setting to another is a minimum of 20 inches on a table. This is the measurement that I use that I think should be the industry standard. If you are setting a table and you're having at least two courses of dinner, I'll have a service plate on top of a charger plate that is 13 inches in diameter. I sometimes get in trouble when I say this, but the flowers are the least important component for me. They must be beautiful where I'm using them and they must really be a statement to things, but they're way down on the list of importance to make an event beautiful. For example, I don’t want anything on a table that restricts the line of eye from one guest to another. So, when I use flowers, they have to play a very specific role that complements rather than takes away from the interaction at play.”

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Where should one start when planning a special occasion like a wedding?

“I think it's really important to first decide where does your aesthetic eye take you. Forget about trends. I always say to my clients that they can come in once with a collection of pictures, but then that’s it. With the internet, everybody has the same pool of references—I want to see that once and then based on intuition create something that they will love even more and have never experienced. Another very important early step is to consider stationery. I've always cared about beautiful stationery for a wedding invite. If there’s only one time that you're going to do such beautiful things, it has to be a wedding. This whole idea of an email is like—don't even bring that up to me. The paperless post? I get apoplectic. A beautiful invitation is so personal and it’s a piece of art your guests can keep forever.”

How does your approach to entertaining large groups and small groups differ?

“It doesn’t. They're all the same. Just the same as an intimate group, a large group needs to feel intimate. I recently did an event for 800 people and what I know will always happen is that in a room of 800 people, there's always a bad table, whether it be at the side or back of the space. In that scenario, you need to be thinking about how does that experience become as intimate as possible so that they feel like they've got the best table in the house? My goal is to make the bad table the best table and so I proposed multiple different levels so there were different viewpoints. For that particular evening, the people who had these seats all said they had the best seat of the house. It’s very possible to create an intimate experience regardless of scale.”

"If you pick up an olive with your fingers, you shouldn't be wiping them on a piece of tissue. Everyone should have a proper cocktail napkin."

David Monn

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Where do you stand on surprising details?

“Louis XIV always said there had to be something unexpected on a table and if it didn't, it was a boring table. For me, that translates to that one little something that is unexpected, so I will include something about the person who I'm hosting the dinner for, or my guest, or the location we are in. I don’t like gimmicks, but I think you still have to have something that feels thoughtful and memorable and makes an event ring true.”

What about conversation starters?

“Conversation starters are really very important and when seating a dinner party with couples I adhere to the old saying, ‘if you sleep together, you do not sit together’. You should go home and speak of your evening, so I actually separate couples on tables. I always let all my guests know who I've seated them next to and tell them if they don't know them, because the whole point to hosting is why you've seated someone next to each other; whether there's a business or a passion connection that they have about each other or something about that we like about individuals. It gives them something to be able to start a conversation with.

Sometimes, people are afraid to do this as it might seem pretentious, but it isn’t. We all have our insecurities, every single one of us does. And it doesn't matter how bold we think we are. You’ll find it's a nice thing when someone tells you what to do and give you some direction in starting new conversations.”

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How is best to throw a spontaneous gathering?

“You just have to do it. It can be super quick, just get it done and feel the mood. My tip? If you’ve got a great signature dish, that’s what you should do all the time and keep it easy. Don't overstress on what that dinner is and make something different each time—change the guest list, not the dish.

I love to make a simple pasta or a baked potato with caviar which isn’t a lot of work but it’s still special. Not everybody can go out and buy caviar, but I would say it's worth keeping something on hand that you can do that you can do sort of quickly. How you serve something—on a beautiful platter or wooden board—also matters.

Most of the dinners I serve are one or two courses—a main course then a dessert—as I’ve learnt people want less. I now serve buffet dinners—if anyone would ever told me I would be this person 20 years ago, I'd have said that will never, ever happen, but people don’t want to be trapped at a table, and an important part of entertaining is knowing this.

Keep dessert at the table short so people can leave the table and serve coffee or tea elsewhere with some biscuits or sweet treats so it's casual. Then someone can leave if they need to leave, or they can relax in comfort. There was a gentleman who gave me a lot of advice when I was young, which was knowing how late to arrive and how early to leave—both as guest and host.”

What are your tips in ensuring the flow of an event feels seamless?

“Timing is really, really important and we are hard on that. For our events, our timelines go to the minute; it doesn't matter whether it's something for 20 people or 800 people. It's not a rounded-up 10 or 15 minutes; it's rounded to 7.20 or 13.60 minutes, and we're militant to it. You have to be.

When you're on your own time at home, it's also important, although in a slightly different way. It's that challenge of knowing and understanding peoples’ attention span. Even if you're having fun and you've got lots of liquor flowing, you need to ensure everything is the right amount at the right time, so they have the best experience and leave wanting more.”