When I arrive just before the winter holidays at Laila and Nadia Gohar's office in New York's Chinatown – which they share with Laila's food and art company, LG Studio – Laila tells me that she and Nadia kind of imagine Gohar World, the Cairo-born sisters’ 11-month-old line of cheeky and exquisite host– and tableware, as a planet. Laila is standing in a voluminous white Simone Rocha skirt and snub-nosed Gucci slides at an induction cooktop making studio lunch. (At least once a week, Laila's endearingly grandmotherly studio lunches can be glimpsed on Instagram. Today it's strozzapreti and potatoes.) “Or maybe a touring circus company,” she offers, tipping water from a tomato can into her pot. “Especially when we go places, and there's food flying out of the car and highly toxic materials like shellac.”
In Gohar World, already beloved for its satin-bowed baguette bags, Battenberg lace wine-bottle aprons and candles shaped like baskets of ricotta, everything is meticulously crafted, and a little droll. The designer Simone Rocha emails me: “I feel like they dress a table like they would dress in my clothes, which I love!” In Gohar World, tables wear starched collars and shirting, chandeliers hold eggs, and beans aren't a budget food, but so deeply loved that they're handpainted in Milan on Paravicini platters and printed in cheeky Kelly green on Gohar World packing tape. Laila and Nadia, small and sylph-like, are
