Decor

On Tuesday, Stella McCartney presented its fall 2013 collection at New York’s 680 Park Avenue, building a series of vignettes for models to lounge in and around. In keeping with the designer’s quirky style, the event filled the ceiling with pink helium-filled balloons.

The Chicago-based company held its massive holiday party at Chicago's Aragon Ballroom December 14. Event Creative's decor included 8- by 12-foot masquerade masks, which had illuminated, color-changing crystal columns as "handles." Event Creative created patterned gobos meant to look like the draped materials on a Mardi Gras float and collaborated with Sound Investment on the lighting.

This year's Winter Illuminations festival in Japan displayed more than seven million sparkling LED lights spread across the grounds of the Nabana no Sato botanical garden, part of the Nagashima Onsen resort area in Kuwana City. The annual festival runs for five months, between November and March, and every year millions visit to witness the stunning display of lights, one of the largest wintertime illumination events in the country.

To highlight the event's focus on children and fund-raising for a charter school, the 2006 Robin Hood Foundation gala had giant chalkboards in the reception area set up in New York's Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. David Stark sketched local landmarks and iconic scenes on the walls, and, during the event, guests could add their own designs with chalk provided in bowls on the cocktail tables.

UrbanDaddy's "white room" event—an affair created in partnership with Stoli to promote the vodka brand's new campaign and flavors—invited guests to create the night's decor using paint and brushes. The November party in New York also supplied its attendees with lab coats and goggles to protect clothes from their creative tasks.

Lifestyle images layered with infrared technology at Target's after-party for the MTV Movie Awards in 2008 allowed guests to interact with the images using the heat and movement of their bodies.

In 2009, Louis Vuitton debuted its new in-store boutique at Saks Fifth Avenue by building an indoor garden at the New York store. The centerpiece of the event's design was a wishing tree, where guests were invited to pen their answers to the question "Where will your journey take you?" and hang the messages on strands of ribbon dangling from its branches.

During the September 2010 run of New York Fashion Week, Chanel reopened its SoHo store with a big bash. To leave most of the retail space free of additional decor elements—and allow the 500 guests to move around—the producers erected two black tents outside and turned the inside walls into an interactive graffiti room. In this area, guests could use custom paint cans to digitally tag oversize LED screens.

For a winter-themed corporate party, design director Andrew Zill of Baltimore-based Feats Inc. created a snowy scene that included a glowing bar anchored by a crystal-flocked tree.

The Nature Conservancy of Canada celebrated its 50th anniversary gala in November at the Ritz-Carlton in Toronto, where planners created a wintery forest feel by lining the ballroom with living trees hung with candlelit lanterns.

Given rainy Golden Globes nights in recent years, this year Best Events built tents into the overall look of the Weinstein Company’s party. Inside the two large structures, overhead fabric panels, carpeting decked with strips of chocolate brown and blue, and a mix of mid-century modern and retro furniture formed an elegant, residential look for the Sunday night affair in Los Angeles.

The decor included 65 custom sofas and more than 100 coffee tables in ESPN's signature colors of red and black. Paying homage to the host city were 25 five-foot lanterns and 50 gas lamps.

Produced by Caravents and Playboy senior marketing director Amanda Civitello, the party had a Mardi Gras theme and decor elements meant to invoke an authentic New Orleans feel. Guests were invited to try on colorful masks. In other areas, playmates and celebrity guests stuffed 250 Crown Royal bags with snacks that were then sent to U.S. military members.