Once upon a time, in pre-Revolutionary France, King Louis XIV was introduced to M&S Picky Bits. And so, the dinner party was born.
These days, all you need for a dinner party to be proclaimed a success is a carefully curated theme, some candles, and a disposable film camera. If you throw in a charcuterie board, you will be truly unstoppable. But how did something so simple as a meal shared with friends gain a title of its own? What is it that makes a dinner party the event of the month, one dutifully photographed and reposted by every guest present?
The history of dinner parties dates back to Ancient Greek symposiums, extravagant gatherings flowing with wine and centred around intellectual debate. It is only in the seventeenth century that the dinner party as we know it began to emerge, starting with the Sun King’s Versailles court and slowly merging into the 1930s supper clubs. What began as a symbol of class anxiety, with fine china symbolising one’s social status, became a gateway to socially enjoy alcohol in a semi-formal, almost aspirational setting. Since its inception, the dinner party represented one’s belonging to a particular community and had a very clear purpose in its structure.
Although today’s version of a dinner party focuses more on the social rather than the culinary aspect and features less fine china and more canned mixed drinks, the idea remains. A one-night-only event marked by its non-extensive guest list and an intimate atmosphere. In the post-Covid era, this concept seems more attractive than ever. Nightlife is crumbling, clubs are closing down — since the year 2000, 522 nightclubs have shut down across Ireland. The cause appears to be obvious – young people are choosing to stay in over a night out on the town. The demand is no longer there. For many, this is the outcome of Gen Z’s apparent rise in conservatism. Yet to boil this trend down to a surge in right-wing young adults is to discard the clear outrage over the death of nightclubs, an example of which is the recent protests following the legal battle between Yamamori Izakaya and The Hoxton hotel.
The reasoning must, then, lie elsewhere. A dinner party is, above all, comfort — an escape from the claws of the routine, an opportunity to show up for your loved ones and for yourself. It merges the formality of a pre-planned function with the relaxed nature of staying in. Its very simplicity makes for the appeal — it doesn’t entail the rigidity of a scheduled outing. Simultaneously, it’s also more involved, demanding from the host and the guest more preparation than simply deciding on an outfit. This is a true but tired reason behind the scale of the dinner party’s recent renaissance. Despite encompassing the social value of such gatherings, it conveniently omits the context of the world in which they are happening.
What distinguishes contemporary dinner parties from those of the past is how accessible they appear to be. Going to your local grocery store and putting together a budget-friendly meal is significantly more attainable than a dinner reservation or even going to a nightclub. Young people starting to cook and relying less and less on pot noodles is not exactly a step in the right direction, but rather proof of a depressing reality where students cannot live a true ‘student life.’ Although there is a lot of fun in meeting up with your friends for a potluck, it is also a reminder of how difficult it is becoming to properly party. When dinners, drinks, nightclub admission tickets and late-night takeaways are becoming a luxury, all you can really do is glamorise the idea of a home-cooked meal.
The reality of dinner parties now appears to not be glamorous at all. Or rather, the dinner party as we know it might not be glamorous — other iterations of it are. The notion of the dinner party exists in a type of classless limbo, wherein both ends of the social ladder enjoy a similar end product. In actuality, however, the dinner party is yet another gateway into subtly flaunting excessive wealth through the so-called quiet luxury. The fine china, expensive tablecloths, intricate flower centrepieces — these are all tokens of exclusivity purposefully hidden on what is simply a kitchen table.
This once more implies the conflicting feelings behind the dinner party — a need to evoke the luxury we cannot achieve. It brings to mind the recent Internet trend of eating caviar on a chicken nugget. An idea so silly it appears to be insignificant, yet accurately portraying the problem with the dinner party. Similarly, the idea of dinner parties being a way for young adults to be offline and reconnect with their community comes off as laughable, when its entire end goal is to be pictured, and in the best light possible. All with the purpose of selling a fantasy to distract us from the bleak reality.
No cultural phenomenon can ever be truly one-dimensionally explainable. Yet what the rise of the dinner party definitely is not is a show of conservatism. While the ways in which we are advertised it might play into the current cultural zeitgeist, the reasons for its surge appear to be quite simple. And while the purchase of a bar cart might not in itself be a recession indicator, the dinner party begs to differ.
