Voices the People and Ideas Shaping the Culture Generosity of Spirit

The inimitable social swan Catherine "Deeda" Blair has distilled decades of know how on style and entertaining in a new book to benefit brain and mental-health research

- By Leah Chernikoff

Deeda Blair did not want to write a book. The society doyenne, medical philanthropist, and mental-health and brain-research advocate has lived an extraordinary life. She's traveled the world, developed meaningful relationships with politicians, industry leaders, and cultural luminaries, and cultivated highly specific tastes. She is known in fashion circles for her elegantly restrained style and extraordinary couture collection; she maintained a close friendship with Hubert de Givenchy. She is a fascinating person, the very embodiment of style and substance. But she would much rather put two interesting people together-like an impressionist art collector and a brain researcher-and listen to them than talk about herself.

Nevertheless, next month Blair will put out a tome, Deeda Blair: Food, Flowers & Fantasy, that can't neatly be categorized. It can broadly be described as an entertaining book, and it's certainly beautiful enough to put out on your coffee table. It's full of gorgeous photos of her serene oyster shell-colored home in Manhattan and the art and places and people that have inspired her and informed her taste over the years. But then it's also a recipe book: a compilation of menus she has refined over years of entertaining as the wife of William McCormick Blair Jr., who served as the ambassador to Denmark and then the Philippines during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and was also a close adviser to Adlai Stevenson. (When William died in 2015, they had been married for 53 years.)