PHOTO SHOOT + ARTICLE
Dinner Party
By Deandra Mercedes Villamil
Models
Bebe Smith, Kapil Rajpopat, Irene Hwang, Omar Falki, Monika Jakubowski
Stylists
Anu Patel, Brandon Silva
Photographer
Giacomo Silvestri
It’s the party we’ve all been waiting for. The lead-up to it was the only reason to get through the end of the week. The suffocation of everyday life, its mundanity, makes the anticipation nearly unbearable. But the mere daydreaming of what the event offers is enough to satiate the hunger. Here we are. We set the dinner table in our most precious fashions, layering every possible fabric, pattern, and texture possible. Green, red, silk, feather, blue, leather, everything. The table, carefully and carelessly decorated in our clothing, is hugged by us, our love. We embrace it as one of us, dressing it with love as we would ourselves, until the lines of object and human are blurred. The table’s original state and its use to us hide under the numerous layers of flashy costume, hoping to conceal the reality that the extraction of our labor may not greatly differ from that of the table.
Never mind that, this day has finally come. Laughter and dance fill the room with a vibrancy and colorfulness that the outside world has been stripped of. Love has been commodified and community replaced by individualism; But here, over dinner, the sanctity of life is protected, celebrated. It’s what is left when there is nothing left. Our wish to forget our struggles, to repress the drowning fear that none of it matters, is quickly satiated by the clinking of our drinks, toasted with a bright and genuine smile. Perhaps none of it indeed matters. For tonight, this fact calls for celebration! In a post-meaning-world, one riddled with ads about the newest hot commodity, manufacturing our itch for yet another product, purpose is warped. Purpose is repackaged to us as consumers, as excessivity for the sake of it. Rejoice in its absurdity. The essence of life, love, and reason lives within us still, and especially within this dinner party. We toast; to end, to this moment, that means nothing, and absolutely everything. Cheers, this is what we’re here for! Deandra Mercedes Villamil
Love has been commodified and community replaced by individualism; But here, over dinner, the sanctity of life is protected, celebrated.
