Ep. 482: Entertaining with a Side of Chaos with India Hicks

How to Decorate

In this episode of How to Decorate, India Hicks returns to discuss her new book, 'Entertaining with a Side of Chaos,' blending memoir and ta

Key takeaways

• Perfect events are not necessary for meaningful connections; genuine moments often arise from unplanned chaos.
• Folding furniture is essential for flexibility and adapting to last-minute changes during gatherings.

Main topics

• Hosting with spontaneity
• Tablescaping with natural, available materials

Notable quotes

"If you wait until your house, your children, your food, your life are all perfect before inviting anyone over, you'll die alone with beautifully folded napkins."

Conclusion

India Hicks reminds listeners that true hospitality lies not in perfec

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:01) Welcome to How to Decorate from Ballard Designs, a weekly podcast all about the trials and triumphs of decorating and redecorating your home. I'm Caroline. I'm on the marketing team. And I'm Taryn, and I'm a product designer. I'm Liz. I head up the creative team. We're your hosts. Join the expert team at Ballard Designs for tips, tricks, and tales from interior designers, stylists, and other talents in the design world. Speaker 2 (0:22) Plus, we'll answer your decorating dilemmas at the end of each episode. We love answering your questions, so don't forget to email us at podcast at ballarddesigns.net. Speaker 1 (0:30) Now, on with the show. Our guest today is a writer, designer, entrepreneur, and the daughter of legendary British interior designer David Hicks. She's been a model and on-air personality for everyone from Bravo to the BBC and has had her hand in the design world for over two decades, from hotels to home collections. Her fourth book, Entertaining with a Sight of Chaos, is part memoir, part tablescaping guide, documenting the tables as well as her approach to hosting guests. India Hicks, welcome to the show. Speaker 3 (0:59) Thank you. Speaker 1 (1:00) Welcome back, actually. So we were just talking about last time and it's been many years, but we're thrilled to get to chat with you about your new book and hear about how it came about. Speaker 3 (1:11) This one is called Entertaining with a Side of Chaos, which I think lets the reader know fairly quickly what to anticipate. Seven years ago, I did another entertaining book that was a little bit more formal and a little bit more perfect orientated. In the intervening years, I realized that actually I have quite a strong point of view on entertaining because I've done quite a lot of it. And the best part of it is the chaos. And I think we need to not be so focused on having this perfect life, perfect table, perfect meal, perfect evening, perfect everything. And I have a lot of chaos in my life and now I'm embracing it. Speaker 1 (1:55) Yes, I was thinking as I was reading the book, I think chaos is probably what most people would hope does not appear at their occasion, but sometimes it is inevitable that it may sneak in. So maybe give us a little taste of some of the types of chaos that you embrace when hosting. Speaker 3 (2:20) Again, chaos comes in all sorts of forms. The entertaining is the important part. And I think in this crazy, unbalanced world that we are all finding ourselves living in, we need to more than ever get together. We need to sit around a table. We need to look each other in the eye. We need to put that phone down for a moment. We need to have meaningful conversations. And we need to leave that table feeling that was really lovely. And so I think from folding a pretty napkin to the right lighting to the right plasma to eating something delicious to having the table set up somewhere extraordinary, that all builds to the moment of, ooh, wasn't that nice? But I do think gathering is important, especially at the moment. You know, most of my children now are fairly grown up, although we treat them as though they're six-year-olds. They're actually sort of 26. And so we sit at a table most evenings when we're together and we're together a lot. And that is the time where we really do either fight or argue or laugh or cry. And all of that's important. And then you take that onto the bigger picture of inviting others over and having guests come or colleagues from work or family that you don't particularly like. I even have a chapter in there that's called, Why Are They Still Here? But there are, in the book, there are recipes, none of which come from me. Thank God we have a top banana who has managed to stay with us, live with us, and cook for us for many, many years. She's absolutely part of our family. And the recipes are from her. But there are lots of tips and tricks which are from me. And I hope that this is kind of part manual, part inspiration, part coffee table book, part book to open up and look at beautiful imagery. So there's a lot that goes on inside of this book. But you asked an example of chaos. You know, there are many examples of chaos inside the book from my ducks and stretch who's sitting here in the room with me. When Claire's back was turned, he got on to the kitchen table and ate the beef from the beef salad. And really, without the beef in the beef salad, you're just left with rather boring salad. And I was just remembering another summer, very similar to the one we're having here in the Bahamas right now, very, very hot summer. And all five of my children were home and they all invite friends and then we invite the parents of the friends and then we've got family friends and the table extends and extends. And I had it beautifully laid up in the garden. Speaker 3 (5:04) candles on it, plates on it, chairs laid. And I suddenly just thought we are going to melt. We're going to melt if we stay here. And I went down onto the lane just outside our driveway and there was a beautiful breeze coming up from the ocean. And I said, we've got to move the table. And there were a lot of horrified looks from everyone around me saying, we can't move the table. It's too late. There are 30 people coming and there are 30 places laid. And I said, we have to move the table. And moving the table was the best thing that we did. The evening went on. Everyone lingered. The breeze was amazing. And even though we were in a lane, we did face one or two people trying to drive around us in their golf carts. Luckily, I live on an island where a golf cart is mainly the main form of transport. But the evening was actually, it was perfect because of that last minute decision. And had I still been in my perfect frame of mind, my perfect phase, we would never have dared to move the table at that last moment. Everybody was carrying their own wine glasses, their own plates, their own cutlery. Nobody minded. Speaker 2 (6:06) Yeah, moving 30 people just sounds rather epic at the last minute. Speaker 3 (6:12) Rather epic at the last minute. My secret to all of my entertaining, whether I'm in England, whether I'm in the Bahamas, whether I'm in New York, is a folding table. Very inexpensive from Amazon, folding bamboo chairs, because then you can lift them up, move them around, fold them up, put them back out. If you've got a big, heavy dining room table, you're in more trouble. But folding tables are very easy to move at the last minute. Speaker 2 (6:38) Do you think that there's a time where you recognized where it was time to embrace more chaos? No, I think it seeped Speaker 3 (6:50) in unexpectedly. Speaker 3 (6:54) And I think there's a lot of beautiful imagery in the book. There's a lot of perfection in the book, don't get me wrong. And I do care. Of course I care. But I want to just encourage hosts to feel that nothing has to be perfect. I mean, I think if you wait until your house, your children, your food, your life are all perfect before inviting anyone over, you'll die alone with beautifully folded napkins. Speaker 2 (7:22) No, that's very true. And I think, you know, to your point, every table looks absolutely meticulous, but you talk a lot about how you're embracing, because you live in the Bahamas, you know, a lot of times you have to... decorate the table with what you have on hand or what is freshest at the grocery store. So talk to us a little bit about how you're kind of doing things a little bit more on the fly because of that. Speaker 3 (7:56) Very much on the fly. And I actually believe that even though island life is challenging, if the boat doesn't come in, we don't get certain things. We have a three-month hurricane season. There's no doctor, dentist, or vet. There were definite challenges to 30 years of living here. But also, it's the most incredible place to live as well. And I feel very much part of a community and one that I respect hugely. Speaker 3 (8:25) When you suddenly think, oh, I need a lampshade or, oh, wouldn't it be nice to have unsalted butter? Or, oh, wouldn't a fresh tablecloth from a shop be lovely to go and buy? Those options aren't available. So, in fact, you use your imagination a lot more. And I think one page in the book shows tomatoes suddenly becoming a centerpiece. Speaker 3 (8:51) It was just born out of the simple fact that we had run out of ideas and energy and options of what to put down the table. Certain times of year, Mother Nature offers us the most incredible bounty of lovely free things, whether it's night-blooming jasmine, whether it's flame trees in bloom. And we can go and borrow from Mother Nature and put that down the table. But this particular evening, I think... there really was nothing. And I was like, oh, I've done palm fronds a hundred times. We've had the shells down the center too many times. And I sort of thought tomatoes. When you think tomatoes, you can't just look at three tomatoes because that looks like you've just been shopping. You need to look at basketfuls of tomatoes. And suddenly that becomes rather dramatic and that actually you can get away with it. you can get away with it. And then, of course, the next day, you're making tomato soup that could be frozen for the next six months. I Speaker 1 (9:51) absolutely loved that table. You know, I think your ability to create such imaginative tables is in part probably because of, what is the saying? Scarcity is the... Mother of invention or something. Yes. That's Speaker 3 (10:10) correct. Yeah. Speaker 1 (10:11) But what would you, what advice would you give to our listeners about how to think outside the box a little bit? Because, you know, are you walking around looking at what do I have in abundance? Are you thinking what textures look good together? Like, is it, are you, is there a mood in your mind you're trying to capture? I guess what's the jumping off point and then how do you go build from that? Speaker 3 (10:33) Yes, there is always a jumping off point. I mean, I, um, design, create and sell collections of hand-block printed table linens with pomegranate, which I've done for a number of years. So there is normally a starting point in my head, a mood board, a story, and whether it's canasta vintage playing cards that I sit at the table and play with my mum, or whether it is a stinging nettle from a garden in England. So those designs then come and then that leads to, oh, actually, maybe one could have amazing, beautiful tablescapes, which actually involve big bowls of stinging nettles or something unusual. But I like to start with the sort of foundation of a table, cloth. I do do bare tables as well, but I like a tablecloth because I am invested in this. And then from there, I build out. So the tablecloth will normally set the tone of what color. Are we going for? And then what napkins do we have? What cutlery do we have? Again, you know, I'm very careful about budget. And I always am a great believer that it doesn't take a huge budget to make or create a very beautiful tablescape or an evening. And it takes very little to even make a lunch for two or a business breakfast. come alive with a bud vase or just some pretty flowers on the table or a pretty candle that we've lit. Just something that makes you feel like you've made that effort and it doesn't need to be a huge floral arrangement delivered by the latest, trendiest, smartest florist. It can be as simple as a bud vase with one bud in Speaker 2 (12:22) it. I think some of the most beautiful and simple tablescapes you've done have just reclaimed bottles dancing all the way down the middle with a single stem in each one that just delivers consistency and beauty and a little bit of unexpected with the reclaimed bottles. Speaker 3 (12:43) I love unexpected. My whole life is an unexpected journey for sure. did I ever imagine after my upbringing in England that I would live on a tiny island in the middle of nowhere with five children, one of whom is Bahamian and three dogs and two cats and several lovebirds, most of whom got eaten by a snake, by the way. So no, life has been very unexpected for me here. But talking about those bud vases and having the drama of them going all the way