When Halpern was invited to present the last-ever salon show at the Berkeley Square club’s current location – before it moves next door – he called upon the Theo Adams Company and his troupe of performance artists to stage a performance of a different kind. “I don’t think Michael really wanted to do a salon fashion show to a bunch of billionaires,” Adams quipped before curtain call, “but we start like that, and then… we fuck things up. I don’t think Annabel’s know what they’ve let themselves in for.”
Clad in Halpern’s rainbow disco sequins, performers slithered their way down a runway framed by the tables of Annabel’s dining members, the club’s ceiling covered dramatically in Christmas baubles. What followed was an emotional rollercoaster of glitter, gloom and show tunes: girls and boys and undecideds in a firework of high-octane emotion, from elation to despair and everything in between. “Unicorns with glitter canons,” Halpern reflected. “It fits so beautifully into what I’m doing. What Theo does is all about juxtaposition: glamour and destruction, and sadness and complete ecstasy.” Across the stage, some club members initially looked a little perplexed. When the performers started grabbing the backs of their chairs and head-banging at them in disco-fuelled fury, they looked a lot perplexed. But it didn’t take long before they had to join in.
“It’s kind of a naff statement, but I like to take people on an emotional rollercoaster. In the end everyone is unified in a sense of catharsis, trying to get all these rich billionaires on board to let themselves be free and just full-on emote,” Adams said. “We’ve created a performance where it’s not ‘come and look at the freaks’. We’re not the entertainment. The soundtrack starts, the lighting comes on, and we’re in control of you for twenty-five minutes. And you have to sit there and watch.” Since he debuted his signature sequins to the world two years ago when graduated from Central Saint Martins, New York-born Halpern has related his exuberant work to the socio-political zeitgeist. The show at Annabel’s was no different. “It comes from a place of feeling really sad right now, and you need that existential experience to feel more alive. Because things are really sad,” he said.
“It’s kind of a naff statement, but I like to take people on an emotional rollercoaster. In the end everyone is unified in a sense of catharsis, trying to get all these rich billionaires on board to let themselves be free and just full-on emote,” Adams said. “We’ve created a performance where it’s not ‘come and look at the freaks’. We’re not the entertainment. The soundtrack starts, the lighting comes on, and we’re in control of you for twenty-five minutes. And you have to sit there and watch.” Since he debuted his signature sequins to the world two years ago when graduated from Central Saint Martins, New York-born Halpern has related his exuberant work to the socio-political zeitgeist. The show at Annabel’s was no different. “It comes from a place of feeling really sad right now, and you need that existential experience to feel more alive. Because things are really sad,” he said.
“Whether you buy it or experience or see it, you can experience that ecstasy. That’s what’s so amazing about what Theo’s doing: people who can’t necessarily afford it – like our friends who are coming later this evening – they can experience that world, too. They are living and breathing this much more than the people living in twenty million dollar houses in Chelsea.” And so, the kids of East London poured in, neon-haired and half-naked in their fantastical character looks, mixing and mingling with the club’s rather more formal clientele. “Michael’s clothes are an interesting way of looking at how women want to dress themselves today,” said Alex Meyers, the consultant for Annabel’s responsible for the event. “What is glamour for today’s woman? We’re so much freer than we used to be. There are so many different body types, so many different ethnicities. Look at your cover: that is that,” she noted, referring to Edward Enninful’s debut issue of Vogue, featuring Adwoa Aboah. “It’s a brave new world.”
Annabel’s, of course, is no stranger to diversity. Since the 1960s, the club has been legendary for the clientele it attracted, from the Queen to The Rolling Stones. “Annabel’s has always been a mixture of high and low, the way Halpern is a mixture of high and low – of East and West London – and I think the whole point of London is that fusion,” Meyer said, referring to the designer, who lives in West London and works in East. “It’s a very unique moment in London social history. The average person is so much more stimulated through all our social mediums that glamour is so much more out there than it used to be. London has always had an element of darkness and grit that’s important to showcase. We can’t just be glam-glam-glam. It needs something more added to it to give it depth; to give it sex appeal.”
Revolutionary times call for revolutionary measures, and although Adams and Halpern both deal in glamour and entertainment, it was one of those nights when you could feel the pillars of the Earth moving a little bit. London, much like the rest of the world, is in rapid, woke evolution, revaluating its own values and differences. “In the end I think people, who would never imagine seeing something like this will be on board,” Adams said. “And I think it could be really jarring for some people, and they’ll really reject it in the beginning, but there’s no way – once you see everyone performing and really feeling what they’re doing – there’s no way not to get on board with it. It’s so emotional.”
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