A Very Billie 21st Christmas | 2022
The world we built
Billie fell in love with the idea of a nostalgic, romanticized, cozy Christmas party to celebrate her 21st birthday. We started with an industrial venue and transformed it into an intimate wonderland with surprises around every corner.
As Billie celebrated her final entry into adulthood, she wanted to treat her guests to those childhood Christmas traditions that remind us all of what’s most important in life.
Her goal was to create a nostalgic Christmas vibe that allowed her guests (many of whom were A-list celebrities in their own right) to feel relaxed, unintimidated, and able to simply be themselves.
All in all - she wanted a party that didn’t need to “be cool” or seem uptight and high-profile. She wanted a celebration full of the things we love most - joy, laughter, and fond memories.
Concept and ideation
During the ideation process, I became obsessed with “authenticity” for this event. How does one recreate the feeling of a cozy Christmas? That nostalgic feeling is so specific and different for every person, so how can we recreate that feeling, and do it authentically?
Billie sent us old pictures of her childhood Christmas, and let us borrow a big box of family decor that the Eilish family uses every year. So, we based the creative around those pieces, and blended a cozy, idyllic alpine village, with the wonderful front-yard kitsch of the 90’s.
We were inspired by traditional Christmas decor from German, Czech, and Belgian tradition, and used a classic color palette of gold, evergreen, candy red, and ivory.
Fabrication and set dressing
We built six unique scenic pieces to complete our transformation. These included a fireplace mantle DJ booth, an evergreen garland entry tunnel, Santa’s Sleigh centerpiece photo moment, and a Bavarian-style Christmas market.
Every piece of decor was hand selected by our awesome scenic team who spent hours upon hours at various prop houses in Los Angeles.
We incorporated slight nods to our own family traditions (with Billie’s blessing) in order to bring true authenticity to the spirit of Christmas. Nutcrackers, toy soldiers, porcelain villages, gingerbread statues, even a working toy train!
For food & beverage, we utilized the Christmas market as serving stations that doubled as activations. There was cookie-decorating, hot chocolate & gingerbread, and ornament-making, for guests to take home with them.
end result
To mark the last passage into adulthood for Billie, we organized a singular “midnight moment” as the party’s final act.
At 11:59pm, all 208 guests had a shot in their hands, and a glorious tiered peppermint cake was wheeled out to the dance floor, where the crowd sang happy birthday.
At 12:00am, all the lights went to dark, and in a visual explosion, all light came back on in pure white, with every beam pointed at the disco balls. With this light, we created an indoor snow effect set to the chorus of “Christmastime” by The Smashing Pumpkins.
Everyone invited was relaxed and at-ease throughout the night, and even Khalid remarked on the cozy atmosphere of the party.
As guests began to trickle out under out storybook goodbye, Billie was absolutely ecstatic with the party. She gave us all a huge thank you and round of applause (something which rarely happens in our line of work), giving us our very own storybook ending.
In the days to follow, we were delighted to see media outlets and social media capturing what we hoped to give Billie that night - authenticity.
before
after
Creative Design: Paladin Creative | Event Production: Two Tree Events | Venue: Sunset at EDITION
