Invitation

In a tongue-and-cheek take on the traditional fashion show invitation, designer Luca Orlandi (whose past show invites have come in the form of an album cover and parking ticket) enclosed the invite for his spring 2005 show in a Luca Luca condom wrapper that promised an event "designed for ultra sensation."

In a no-expense-spared bash for the 2010 opening of its New Bond Street London flagship, Louis Vuitton created unique, numbered V.I.P. invitations that incorporated multiple elements of its travel legacy. Information about each component of the party was featured on a distinct card stock or vachetta leather piece; the final piece was a python card case bearing after-party details. The entire invite was fastened together with a leather tie and gold key—a nod to the French fashion house's luggage-making roots.

For the fall 2008 shows at London Fashion Week, fashion designer Gareth Pugh created a latex rose corsage as the invitation to the British Fashion Council's Moët & Chandon Boudoir V.I.P. room. The pieces were packaged in a Moët & Chandon box and messengered to guests.

For the 2008 Tod's Art Plus Film party at the Whitechapel Gallery in London, British fashion designer Henry Holland designed a flip-book-style invitation that featured his cheeky drawings of notable figures in film, music, fashion, and the arts.

For Bloomberg's White House Correspondents' Dinner after-party in 2008, guests were sent a device that would only reveal the party information when recipients scanned their fingerprints. As an added element of security, each credit card-size piece only responded to the fingerprint of the intended invitee.

As a reference to New York City, invitations to the 2006 Maison Martin Margiela store opening in the West Village came in the form of a coffee cup, with event details printed on a folded napkin placed inside.

Inspired by Maria Lani, the self-declared actress who conned the crème de la crème of the 1920s Paris art scene into painting her portrait, John Galliano's spring 2011 fashion show invites came in the form of scaled-down artworks printed on canvases with the show details on back.