When food and fashion meet

  Designers are known to make sure that each element directly into the production of their fashion shows. Hems, makeup, music - no detail too small.

In about 30 guests at the Museum of Fine Arts Fashion Council Art Collector Jimmy Raye met at the house of Salem for lunch with recipes by designers, details of which were created more than good. In mistresses setup menu, they had to come up with a word of fashion "fabulous."

Although beautiful, sumptuous food is not the first image with the fashion industry connected, Michelle Tolini Finamore, 43, Curator of Fashion Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, the event one-of planned-a-kind for members of the Council of fashion, see the world of food and fashion very closely linked. The Council will come from supporters of the AMF together to explore the intellectual, cultural and artistic aspects of fashion through conferences, trips and other special events such as lunch together.

"Fashion, like food, is all about expression," said Finamore, who collected written cookbooks of designers, writers and Hollywood fashion icons past 20 years (see article on page 20) and on the daily menu based on recipes from these books based. "Food and fashion are very basic needs, we need to eat, we need to carry food, shelter, clothing, love -. They are all related and essential."

As Raye, 61, a former Boston Ballet dancer and current Pilates instructor, guests took them through three floors of the rare hats, shoes, dresses and accessories Finamore as "one of the best private collections described n 'everywhere," a tour of the 20th Century drew table with foods that Federalist style Raye is prepared in the kitchen, pantry and dining room of the house in 1916.

Upstairs, the customer almost a dozen rooms submissions modes, including tires Civil War, Prohibition-era hats and black boots Lace Cocktail seen designed in 1947 by Salvatore Ferragamo. Downstairs, put Martha Sanders, 56, and his team of Lantern Hill Catering in Topsfield, the last a breakfast buffet with some of these designer button.

The menu was a collaboration between Finamore and Sanders, who has studied and prepared a number of historic menus. While the food took visitors through six decades of fashion history - potatoes, beets Diana Vreeland and celery salad Paris (1950), cold poached salmon Maxime de la Falaise with mayonnaise Dill (1970), and cake caramel grandmother Zac Posen (2009) between stops - it was put to the taste of a modern and sophisticated audience available both an appreciation of the old recipes and attention.

"We wanted things to be easy, summery and colorful," says Sanders. "We chose products with an eye on what they looked like and how they would look together." Buffet lunch served in the solarium Raye and ate in the dining room includes details a design-savvy audience could appreciate: bright yellow yolk salad dressing Paris, cucumbers to fish scales on salmon, seals and edible flowers to mimic noodles.

Published in fashion, Board member Megan O'Block, 53, of Chestnut Hill, the "Cooking for My Three Sons" and was part of the planning was the visual appeal of food is very important. "I think a lot of people who do not understand in the kitchen, that if you make a really attractive drive, even a child wants to dig," O'Block said. "It's definitely on the color and position of the food."

Sanders notes that some of the cookbooks Finamore collection including recipes and ingredients like "processed white bread, Jell-O," which were representative of their time ham. Choice recipes, Sanders and sought Finamore food that transcends its time.

In particular, Sanders said pasta salad gardener of designer and retailer Dianne Benson, "brought to the park," she said, with the use of fennel and lemon-garlic dressing and light. "I'm usually more of a federation than that," she adds. Colorful spring salad and artichokes, black olives, tomatoes, red and yellow cherries, pistachios and fresh basil. "This is the best salad I've never done."

Of Orange, Vogue, onion and avocado salad, was first published in 1939, Sanders said. "I never thought marinating orange and sweet onion" boss you follow the instructions to a total of 8 hours before serving. "Tastes begin to blend together. It is an essential element of the salad and is surprisingly good," she said.

Salad Parisienne Vreeland, the first Finamore the selected recipe, also featured sophisticated and unexpected elements. Down beside yolks through a fine sieve, salad with olive oil, anchovies, Dijon mustard, tuna and diced cucumbers dressed. "I knew immediately that if all income would be so, it would be interesting," said Sanders.

In fact, she was impressed by the revenues that are preparing more for a summer wedding so it is the restoration of the daughter of one of the guests for lunch. Although Sanders adjustments often it boils, put them in close connection with what on the page. "I thought that was part of the fun, as it should be, so that everyone with an authentic experience with the recipe."

For O'Block, in the historic home of Raye food was also part of an authentic experience. "When someone who is passionate about what they collect is just, you can not help but be excited about it," she said.

Much of the organization of the event was Raye, who with his physical trim dancer, looks every bit the fashionista in black-rimmed glasses and skinny jeans left. Raye has been collecting seriously in the 1980s, when he used his accumulated pieces as costumes for dance productions. Lunch was on his plate, China, and money on a conference table with a blue vintage silk sari and dressed mistresses he created space served. "Many people thought they were bouquets, but they were hats," said Rei covered pieces of silk daffodils, roses and poppies.

Not one to miss a detail, the collector noticed the velvet beret collection like a cake. "So I did it on a cake plate," Rei said, "Food, tour, everything works really -. Production as".