On the Half Shell

Now that it’s December, the holiday party invitations are trickling into the W offices. One of the most intriguing was a card from Roman & Williams, the uber chic design team behind, most recently, the new lobby and restaurant of the Royalton Hotel. The darkly beautiful letterpress card announces the party as the “Gran Slab de Mer” and features an illustration of an opened oyster that slightly resembles a pair of human lungs. (Principals Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch were early adopters of the taxidermy trend, so the gothic touch is no surprise.) We’ve since learned that Standefer and Alesch have some dramatic plans for the December 13 (invitation only) event. The partners, both former Hollywood set designers, have hired Rick Ellis—a TV and film food stylist who worked with Standefer on the The Age of Innocence—to create enormous Dali-esque seafood towers that will supposedly make Balthazar’s plateaux de fruits de mer look like amateur hour. “Robin told me she wants it to be over-the-top,” says Ellis, who’s collaborating with the caterers Highly Eventful. “The tallest one will be about three and a half feet tall.”