Draping lent a luxe look to the room, regarded as the night's hottest ticket: Jennifer Aniston, Patricia Arquette, Jake Gyllenhaal, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Ethan Hawke, Taylor Swift, and Lorde were among the A-list attendees.
The Art of Elysium hosted its eighth annual Heaven Gala, presented by Samsung, at Hangar 8 on Saturday. Marina Abramović was the creative force behind this year's event, creating an experience based on her concept of heaven as a state of consciousness where light and dark meet.
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.
A programmable water wall bar backdrop rotated through text and patterns for a hypnotizing effect.
For a dramatic award show, take a cue from live music acts and punch up your stage set with wild visuals. "Reflection mapping” is an innovation from V Squared Labs that uses mirrors, light, and sculptural form to dramatic effect—and it's just debuting on the live event scene this month. The visual arts studio teamed up with electronic dance music group Krewella to create the visual technology as a stage set for the band's tour. Dubbed “the Volcano,” the set comprises mapped crystal structures, with crystals made out of one- and two-way mirrored acrylic plastic outfitted with reflective backing to create an interior mapping effect. Each crystal is also equipped with either LED, video LED tape, or both, inside, creating complex reflection effects that appear visually to change the structure from within. V Squared Labs founder Vello Virkhaus and lead designer Amanda Hamilton collaborated with fabricator and technical engineer Stefano Novelli to bring the vision of ”'reflection mapping” from pencil sketches and creative reference point into the real world. Want to try something similar for an award show? Hamilton said there are future applications for the concept: “The effect of contained infinite reflections is a technique we'd love to explore further, as controlling chaos is an exciting challenge.”
Mix things up every year for an event that people will want to keep attending. From a dinner onstage at a historic theater to a family-style feast inspired by a royal banquet, Clarks's annual award dinner gets a lush, distinctive setting and look every year. For this year's event at Boston's Royale Nightclub in June, the footwear company's senior director of corporate events and community relations, Jane Feigenson, drew inspiration from two very disparate sources: street art and the opera. “The nightclub was originally an opera house and has a cool vibe,” Feigensen said. “I played off the opulence of opera and mixed in splashes of graffiti and grunge.” The look was both glam and grunge—and very cohesive.
