Clipping: Surprise party

"Posted in: Frances Wasem's Flash! Extra blog
Dinos Chapman's surprise 40th birthday bash
Jan 21, 2011 01:03:00 PM

When Lucy Yeomans and Natalia Vodianova (with the help of Dinos' wife Tiphaine) decided to throw a surprise 40th birthday party for the artist Dinos Chapman, there was just one question at the forefront of their minds. How on earth do you surprise a Chapman Brother? How? By throwing the mother of all parties, that’s how!

As Dinos walked through the rain splattered, red-light bathed alleyway in Soho (Roxanne, you don’t have to put on your red light was, rather appropriately, played during the night!), he must have wondered what kind evening was in store. Opening the innocuous matte black double doors of the as yet unopened club The Box that sits next door to one of Soho's more colourful establishments, he must have been even more confused. With the help of the party's sponsors The Burlington Arcade, the club had opened early ‘for one special night’ in honour of Dinos' birthday and the upper floor still had the brightly coloured garish flowered wallpaper from the clubs previous incarnation. Walking up the clubs stairs Dinos could feel the slightly tacky wetness of the newly painted banisters and must have wondered why everything seemed so still. Inside the main room Dinos' friends and family were gathered in hushed silence waiting to shout ‘Surprise!’ as he walked in. And he was indeed taken aback (‘Delighted, but totally surprised’ was Dinos' wide-smiled response), not just by the 200 friends awaiting him, but also by the wild night that was to follow.

The Box is infamous in New York – and the new London club looks set to follow in NY's very naughty little footsteps – and the night, as it began to unfold felt like a scene from a moody thirties Berlin club, or more specifically the nightclub scene from Cabaret, where burlesque performers, beat boxers and cabaret acts both fascinate and surprise with their provocative tongue-in-cheek performances and the decadent vibes gets everyone in the mood to dance, dance, dance. The performers were flown in from New York, especially for the night, but my personal favourite was the ‘fashionista girl’ who did a reverse striptease, pulling shoes from her Afro and stockings from very unusual places. The MC also cheekily announced that, ‘Everything can be bought from Topshop for under £50’, much to the amusement of Phillip Green who was sitting in a front row booth. Meanwhile Valentino was in the booth next door, taking lots of shots with his camera, and Rosamund Pike was getting very cosy with her new man.

First up on the podium to dance was Tiphaine Chapman, who had to discard her platforms (she almost took a tumble on the very dark stairs earlier in the evening) making the point that the podium was ‘too small!’ (I did a turn with her, but the black edge of the platform against black carpet was just too terrifying) as a dozen people squashed on to feel the beat, including Natalia, who also discarded her shoes (and had trouble finding them afterwards) to dance barefoot.

In the smokers' corner (the as yet unfinished roof terrace - bare brick, metal pipes, and a plastic sheet roof), Jude Law caught up with Kate Moss, and Stephen Webster talked about escaping the rain for Bali (he’d just arrived back) that was now dripping down the sides of the plastic sheet. Downstairs Keith Tyson was doing Vodka shots with Jason Brooks, Kate Moss was trying to get a glass of Perrier-Jouët at the very packed bar (Supermodel status does not work so well in the dark!) and Nick Rhodes was taking pictures (he does this at every party – how I would love to take a look at his archive of great moments) and recalling other nights at the The Box in New York, which were ‘even more infamous and outlandish’. A mother of all parties indeed!"

Source: Harper's Bazaar UK