This week's roundup includes shopping carts at a Hollywood premiere, a Great Gatsby-style picnic in New York, metal-cutting as performance art in Montreal, and creative ideas for fall entertaining—including a San Diego teambuilding experience that involves jetpacks.
Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS held its second annual Picnic by Design fund-raiser August 21 on the rooftop terrace of the Scholastic building in New York’s SoHo neighborhood. Marie Aiello Design Studio’s Great Gatsby picnic spread included fresh flower arrangements, a tiered display of cookies, and a façade of the yellow 1929 Duesenberg Leonardo DiCaprio drives in Baz Luhrmann’s movie.
Michigan-based interior designer Corey Damen Jenkins opted for a Motown theme, featuring a suitcase decorated with photos of music legends and a trippy-looking neon-colored blanket.
A painting of a shopping cart figures prominently in Clear History, Larry David's new film for HBO. And—wouldn't you know it—plenty of shopping carts popped up at the film's lighthearted premiere party in a Hollywood parking lot in late July. Designed by Billy Butchkavitz, the event's entrance was lined with palm trees illuminated in rainbow-hued lights. The bright red carts stood on staggered pedestals, and each had its own individual spotlight.
London-based clothing company Boden hosted a viewing of its fall 2013 collection in New York on August 13 with its style consultant Zanna Roberts Rassi. Because the label doesn't have a stateside boutique, planners from Alison Brod PR chose to host the function in a suite at the Crosby Street Hotel. The fashion-editor invitees were also encouraged to bring their kids to check out the children's line, and the event had an appropriately sunny vibe with colorful snacks to match: the dessert table, laden with hot-pink blooms, held a rainbow-hued selection of macarons from the hotel's catering team.
Let Freedom Ring: 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington commemorated the milestone anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, and the August 28 event on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial drew President Obama, former Presidents Clinton and Carter, Oprah Winfrey, Jamie Foxx, and members of the King family. As part of the event, the family rang a cast-iron bell from the church in Birmingham, Alabama, where a bomb killed four black girls in 1963. Event planning firm BCT Consulting Group directed the production, hiring Hargrove as the general contractor.
Diesel's Food Truck for Change hit the streets of the greater Toronto area on Thursday to coincide with the opening of the Toronto International Film Festival. Targeting celebrities and influential festival attendees, the food truck doles out "croughnuts" in exchange for a donation to the charity OneXOne. The truck will roll around the city through Sunday. Spinradius Events handled production for the activation.
To celebrate the opening of its new global headquarters in Montreal, Walter Surface Technologies hosted a bash on August 22. Some 100 local business leaders attended the function, which included some decidedly nonstandard entertainment: a synchronized performance between a metal-cutter and a harpist.
Earlier this summer, the Parrish Art Museum hosted its annual benefit in the Hamptons. The museum’s barnlike entryways served as a runway of sorts at the event, and super-long tables ran the lengths of the outdoor corridors. The setting gave diners the sense they were floating above the former potato fields that surrounded them.
How's this for an unforgettable teambuilding experience: Let a group soar above San Diego's Mission Bay via jetpack through Jetpack America Mission Bay. Groups can select half- or full-day options, and multiple "Jetlev" packs can be deployed to accommodate groups of as many as 72.
In San Francisco, BloomThat delivers flowers wrapped in recycled burlap across the city by way of bike messengers—in just 90 minutes from the time the order is made. "It makes a pretty amazing impact to leave a meeting with a client and have flowers delivered to them a few minutes later," says BloomThat's David Bladow.
