It’s so easy to pull up a chair to B. Smith’s table, where the restaurateur, cookbook author, television show host and lifestyle magazine boss serves passion rather than perfection.
The ease comes in knowing that there’s more than enough room for all the people you are. Family recipes can be remembered. New traditions made. Knees can touch. A joke can be shared. Flirtatious glances can be exchanged. Top buttons on tight waistbands can go undone. And you can just be.
Wearing a lilac knit sleeveless sweater and evening-length plum skirt, Smith sparkled from the inside out as she dazzled a crowded room at Marshall Field’s State Street store earlier this month. Mothers and daughters, businessmen and businesswomen, homemakers and students-all had come for Smith’s presentation on creating holiday gatherings, from Thanksgiving dinners to millennium parties.
With so many lifestyle gurus on airwaves and in publishing (the most well-known being Martha Stewart), it’s hard to imagine there’s room for another. But Smith is not looking for a place at that table. She’s already set her own.
The fashion model-turned-entrepreneur-who may put her stamp on bedding, table linens and housewares next–is making her own way by showing that living with style can be within reach of people from all walks of life. Smith grew up in a small town outside of Pittsburgh emulating her mother, a homemaker and part-time maid, and other beautiful, poised African-American women.
“My style is more urban, while at the same time, it is casually elegant,” says the 50-year-old Smith, who showcases that elan on her “B. Smith with Style” show on WMAQ-Ch. 5. (The show, now in its third year, airs at 5:30 a.m. Saturdays.) “I want people to understand that it is your vision, your background that you bring to what you do.
“I’m not so much about setting the perfect table. It’s really OK to use your kitchen flatware in the dining room. It’s OK to use china every day, and it’s OK to use Fiesta ware or stoneware for entertaining. . . . You can do it. You can mix different things and you can do it with style.”
Relaxing the rules about what and how to serve is a welcomed message for B. Smith’s following.
“She brings a simple down-home atmosphere and mixes it with formality,” said Hap Hanson, one of the estimated 100 people who came to see Smith and to purchase her second and latest book, “B. Smith: Rituals & Celebrations,” (Random House, $35). “This way you include more people and make entertaining accessible.”
Flipping through Smith’s new book at the presentation, Dana O’Banion said: “She has a certain amount of class. She makes you think about things differently and you see the things that one can aspire to.
“You know everyone was not born in upscale areas like Newport (Rhode Island). I know I wasn’t. My upbringing puts me in the middle. And I like that she has a message that I can hear. She brings different things together. She does it in an upbeat way and with her positive attitude she makes you feel you can do it too. There’s no pressure to be perfect. You feel comfortable just being and doing the best you can.”
The magic word
Just being is the magic word for Smith.
Born Barbara Smith in 1949 in Everson, Pa., she is one of four children and the only female.
“I grew up in a three-family house. Our family had an apartment and there were renters in the other two. My parents had a basement apartment that they kept as our play room. We could have parties there, and my mother had her pantry there,” says Smith.
“My bedroom was next to my parents’ bedroom. It was a girl’s bedroom in the way it was decorated. My mother and my father (a laborer for U.S. Steel) were people who were very resourceful. They did a lot with what they had.
“There was canning, baking, family dinners and family visits.”
Smith knew early who and what kind of woman she wanted to be. Throughout high school she told everyone she was going to be a model, and her statuesque good looks, coupled with her determination, helped to fulfill her self-prophecy.
“My father was very religious and was not that thrilled with my being a model. He eventually came around. When I asked him if I could go to modeling school, he said no. But when I said, `Well, can I go to finishing school?’ He said yes.”
Cynthia Ivey, the African-American woman who was her instructor, was someone she came to emulate, as she did her parents, the late Florence and William Smith. Growing up in the 1950s, she also admired the poise of screen stars, such as Loretta Young and Audrey Hepburn, and singers Lena Horne and Nancy Wilson.
Her dream of becoming a model didn’t come easy.
“I was rejected so many times, but I kept trying. I tried out for the Ebony Fashion Fair and was rejected again and again. And then the next year I tried, they said yes,” she says.
But when she went to New York, there was more rejection. She finally got signed with the prestigious Wilhelmina Agency, and as she promoted herself, she also learned a thing or two about marketing and her name.
“I started going only by my first intial when I’d make calls to get jobs. Instead of saying, `Hi, this is Barbara Smith,’ which seemed to take too long for me to get out, I shortened it to `B. Smith.’ It had a quicker and better rhythm and was a name people remembered.”
“I talk about the rejections because it only looks easy. It’s important not to give up,” says Smith, glancing at her hands, on which she wears three of her mother’s rings.
“Who I am today is because of the family values and the style of my parents. My mother and father took us to New York to the World’s Fair, the flower shows in the spring, to the museums. We got dressed up, me in pretty dresses and my brothers in little boy suits.”
Smith modeled for 12 years, first in the Ebony Fashion Fair in 1969, and was still doing magazine covers in 1986. She was the first African-American model to be on the cover of Mademoiselle magazine in 1976.
She tried singing and acting after modeling. When those careers did not work out the way she wanted, she took a serious look at the food industry.
Living away from home, she missed family meals. She was known for cooking dinners and inviting people over to join her.
For Smith, entertaining was always part of her.
`Nobody turns you down’
She opened her first restaurant, B. Smith’s, in New York in 1986 with then-partner Michael Weinstein (that restaurant has moved from its original Times Square address and opens as B. Smith Restaurant Row at its new theater-district location Monday). With her husband, Dan Gasby, she also now owns B. Smith Union Station in Washington, D.C., and B. Smith Sag Harbor on Long Island.
Her book “B. Smith’s Entertaining and Cooking for Friends,” published in 1995 (Random House, $27), was among the first on entertaining by an African-American author. Her latest book, “B. Smith: Rituals and Celebrations,” is the second of a four-book deal with Random House.
“When my parents came to see me in New York, they were surprised I had so many friends over to the house for dinners,” Smith says. “I told them it was because when you cook in New York, nobody turns you down. Everyone you invite to dinner shows up.”
Having different faces and voices at your table and in your life is a theme Smith has in her new magazine, B. Smith Style, where different cultures in the U.S. are naturally represented. Her magazine, which made its debut late last month, has all the elements that interest her: entertaining, home, fashion, beauty, gardening and travel.
“Multiethnic is the key word. It’s about inviting someone from work whom you like, whose face and skin color looks different than yours,” says Smith, who now lives in New York and Sag Harbor with Gasby, a television producer, and stepdaughter Dana. “You happen to like them and then your world begins to open up.”
Gasby says just because Smith is African American and on the cover of the debut issue, it doesn’t mean she will attract only other African Americans.
“She’s breaking down stereotypes of how and what people should do, and how they should interact. And she is doing it in a very subtle and powerful way,” Gasby says. “Women (of any race) who are affluent see her as someone exciting with helpful tips on living a great life, and they relate to her style. And young girls from poorer backgrounds see her as a role model.
“She is crossing income and educational lines because she did not grow up tragically black with her growth being stunted by racism. She sees all people living in a greater community. She’s lived around the world and sees how those barriers can be broken down.”
Smith says she wants more people to understand how important it is to experience all of life for themselves.
“It’s important to get out there in order to see and to know and not live in a box.”
Her personal ministry of style is as much about that as it is in telling people how to have affordable luxuries and their own everyday style.
A GIFT OF THANKS
B. Smith offers a thoughtful and inexpensive way to give thanks on Thanksgiving Day: a napkin bearing the names of those you are thankful to have had in your life.
The napkins can be given anytime to anyone you simply want to say thanks to. Or they can be made as a gift for Thanksgiving dinner guests-either made before the holiday and used at the dinner or made as an interactive project at the dinner.
The napkins represent those gathered at those special occasions.
“We can give thanks for being together and just having each other,” she says.
How to make a “thanksgiving” napkin:
With a fabric pen (available at fabric and crafts stores), write the names of people you’re thankful to have had in your life on a solid-colored cloth napkin. Or have each dinner guest write his or her name on a cloth napkin and circulate the napkins, collecting a signature from every guest.
— Pamela Sherrod
