Factory Girl: English Christmas Tea Party

This Sunday, Dec. 8 was the annual Christmas Tea Party, hosted by the fabulous hostess extraordinaire, Lynn Barrie. Lynnie transformed her beautiful Indian Beach home into a proper English-tea oasis; the home was filled with banquets of sausage rolls, pork pies, tea sandwiches, a plethora of biscuits, scotch eggs and a lot of bloody champagne.

The crowd consisted of more than 100 of Sarasota’s most stylish, eccentric and stunning women (with, of course a colorful sprinkle of some special, dapper lads to mix it up a bit). Brits and Americans alike indulged in the traditional English tea, each cheekily making fun of one another’s accents as the champagne began to generously flow. For a moment, I was transported back to my London life, sipping tea and hysterically laughing the way one only can with witty, self-deprecating English people. And then, I would start to sweat in the dense Florida heat, and remember — Oops, I’m actually in Sarasota!