HL:Creative, helmed by creative director Ryan Jordan, also designed and produced the holiday dinner. The elegant look for the tabletops included short arrangements of red flowers, black linens, and votive candles.
The Mint Agency recently began handing SodaStream's public relations, so staffers decided to host a media lunch during TIFF to introduce journalists to the brand's executive team. Decor for the daytime event, held at Live at the Hive, was clean and bright.
Along with pink and orange gerbera daisies, decor included vases filled with fresh citrus fruits, Moroccan-style lamps, and displays of the SodaStream machine itself.
To celebrate its 29 films premiering at TIFF, Entertainment One hosted a blue-carpet bash (playing off its logo) on September 9. Held at the Roundhouse, the event was designed by McNabb Roick Events and had an outdoor bar sponsored by Skyy. Cocktail tables were lit in the evening's signature hue.
Inside the venue, sleek decor stuck to a white-and-icy-blue color scheme.
The Breslin Bar & Dining Room has redesigned Liberty Hall, the 2,500-square-foot event space located on the lower level of the Ace Hotel. A wall of artfully arranged vintage speakers lines one wall, while more modern audiovisual touches include lighting controls, a retractable screen, a Blu-Ray player, a video projector, and Wi-Fi. The space seats 120 guests and has a standing occupancy of 200. Two walls can move to create two or three rooms from the space. Chef April Bloomfield has also created new menus for the space.
For the In Style and Warner Brothers party, Thomas Ford of Tom Ford Designs constructed a tent over the Beverly Hilton Hotel fountain and transformed the venue into a space meant to evoke a futuristic galaxy where DJ Michelle Pesce spun for the crowd.
The room was accented by hot and cold contrasts of magenta, plum, and ice blue set against deep blue walls, which were covered in fiber-optic lights.
As part of the party, Abel McCallister Designs also constructed a chocolate lounge for Godiva, where a series of sculptural chocolate installations incorporated artistic interpretations of heart images in an homage to romantic film and TV scenes.
For HBO’s party at the hotel’s Circa 55 restaurant and adjoining pool and pool deck, Cindy Tenner worked with designer Billy Butchkavitz to transform the space altogether—including covering the hotel’s iconic pool with a lounge constructed by Special Event Contractors. Overall, the party’s palette was red, camel, and leopard prints and colors. “I always have some heavy inspiration for events like the Golden Globes, but for this year’s design theme, I just wanted to have fun,” Butchkavitz said. He drew ideas from "Diana Vreeland’s love of red and leopard and the over-the-top kitsch of Liberace," he said.
The design of the Fox Golden Globes party was what its producer 15/40 Productions described as “the ultimate New York loft.” Brick- and wood-paneled walls, Chesterfield couches, and oxblood carpeting accentuated with ash-colored wooden flooring decked the space—which hardly resembled a tent.
Producer Best Events had new freedoms this year when it came to the Weinstein Company’s Golden Globes party: The Beverly Hilton recently removed the giant palm trees that have been in the center of the event space every year. This gave the production team an uninterrupted footprint for the first time in the 15-plus years it has hosted the event. Instead of erecting two tents to work around the palms, the event made use of one large 100-foot round tent, cut in half with a 30-foot extension (that created the shape of a D). The party's sponsors included Marie Claire, Fiji Water, Lexus, and Netflix.
Chris Benarroch worked with 15/40 to produce what Benarroch described as “a very sleek look this year" that created "a modern yet luxe environment.” To achieve the look, the team used cream Ultrasuede furnishings, smoked mirrors, and gold and black accents that highlighted sponsor logos.
A liquid caprese was among the dishes on a so-called "living menu," meant to be nutrient-, antioxidant-, and vitamin-rich.
The Brussels Flower Carpet is a 19,375-square-foot mosaic of 700,000 intricately arranged begonias that comes to life every two years for five days during August in the central square of the European capital city. Meant to incite conversation about nature, cities, and art, the designs have typically incorporated themes from Belgium’s history since the first carpet was created in 1971. It takes 100 gardeners four hours to arrange the petals by hand. The next flower carpet will appear in 2014.
The Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival, held in a remote township in northeastern Taiwan, culminates with the simultaneous release of more than a thousand sky lanterns in early February. Every year thousands write their wishes for the new year on lanterns before launching them into the night air. Traditionally, sky lanterns are made of oiled paper or tissue with a wire frame containing a small candle that causes the lantern to float up, then return to the ground when it burns out.
The Canadian city of Ottawa turns into a giant winter festival for three weeks every year when visitors get a chance to skate on the world’s largest naturally frozen ice rink, check out competitive ice sculpting, and play in North America’s biggest snow playground. At the 2013 Winterlude, the National Capital Commission worked with the Jinju Namgang Yudeung Festival in South Korea to create a 115-foot-long tunnel comprising 1,300 lanterns. The tunnel, located in Confederation Park, celebrated 50 years of diplomatic relations between the countries.
The Festa dos Tabuleiros, or the Festival of the Trays, takes place every four years in Tomar, Portugal, during the summer. Originating in the 1200s, the festival takes its name from the towering tabuleiros decorated with 30 loaves of bread and colorful paper flowers that are balanced on the heads of more than 400 women during the weeklong festival’s final procession. The festivities kick off with a street-decorating competition, during which townspeople decorate the streets of the city with elaborate, brightly hued paper flowers and crepe paper garlands. The last festival, in 2011, attracted more than 600,000 visitors.
The Winter Illuminations festival in Japan displays 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. Every year millions visit to witness the stunning display of lights, one of the largest wintertime illumination events in the country. The annual festival runs for five months, between November and March, and includes the popular 200-meter-long Tunnel of Light that guests can walk through while enveloped in more than a million lights. Visitors can also buy tickets to an observation deck that lifts them 45 meters into the air and rotates 360 degrees for a full view of the park.
The 2011 event took place at the chancery of the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China. Guests exited the ball through a tunnel of 999 red Chinese lanterns, symbolizing good fortune.
At the 2011 event, the theme on the terrace was "Chinese circus." Paper umbrellas festooned Kehoe Designs' central bar.
David Rodgers did the design and production for the exhibition's opening-night party, which took place on January 10 at the Wilshire May Company Building. A lounge area had a Studio 54 theme and was decked in disco balls; furniture was swathed in Diane von Furstenberg-like prints.
At the 2009 launch for Louis Vuitton's collaboration with Stephen Sprouse, Brooklyn Guild designed a hallway that led to the main room. Created as a second area for photographers to snap pictures of guests, the tunnel was marked with Stephen Sprouse-Louis Vuitton graffiti and covered with a color-changing ceiling.
According to Raúl Àvila, who has produced the benefit's decor since 2007, "surrealist whimsy" influenced his ideas for the event. In the center of the museum's Great Hall sat a custom-built, 24-foot-tall cylinder covered in white roses, with red roses inserted in a large-scale lip pattern inspired by Schiaparelli and Prada designs. A total of 40,000 roses were used in the installation.
