Immersive Cult: meet London's most in-demand party planning duo

The customised pastel suits they’re wearing today (complete with teddy bear heads with flashing eyes made out of bicycle lights) were made by their costume designer Annike Flo for Tokyo Dreams, the London Fashion Week event they threw for Miu Miu and Love magazine. It saw Suki Waterhouse, Harry Styles and Georgia May Jagger making merry in a bonsai forest, drummer girls playing in neon bikinis and a cat café in the toilet. ‘It snowballed into this insane thing,’ says Moore. ‘Every single person in the world seemed to be there, but we were worried about this cat in the loo!’

Creating this much fun is a serious business. Moore argues that our exposure to incredible effects in films has upped the ante for parties: ‘We’re craving something as amazing as any special effect in real life. I don’t do drugs, so for me it’s about creating the most amazing trip you can ever have without the hangover.’

Tokyo Dreams took them six months to pull off, including a two-week research trip to Japan. ‘We knew Japanese people would be coming so we had to do Japan justice,’ says Moore. ‘Can you imagine if we’d just done the tourist-trap version?’ Perish the thought.Moore and Pastori went on ‘multiple’ trips to New Orleans to research Loulou’s 2014 Mardi Gras bash, attended by Moss, MIA and Alexa Chung. ‘We did a voodoo ritual to summon the disco zombie crocodile, which had lasers coming out of it,’ says Pastori. ‘The audience were stamping their feet, everyone was going crazy. It’s about taking the energy of the party — the dancing, the sexiness, the intensity of the crowd — and then combining it with theatre to tell a story.’

Love’s Katie Grand was ‘incredibly chilled’ about her Tokyo extravaganza, but not all their clients are so hands-off. ‘The biggest challenge is somebody who doesn’t trust us,’ says Pastori. ‘They try to micromanage us sometimes, but they’re always happy with the result.’ The company doesn’t do social media, so all their bookings happen by word of mouth.

Neither will talk about how much these parties cost. ‘The budget varies so much,’ says Moore vaguely. From what to what? ‘From high to low! That’s all I’ll say. It’s not about the money — if a project excites us, we’ll do it.’ Pastori chimes in: ‘We have done things for almost nothing because we wanted to do them.’ ‘Don’t say that!’ Moore squeals, mock-horrified.

For most of their clients, money is no object. ‘We met somebody very high-profile the other day,’ says Moore. ‘He said, “Listen, I love what you do. You’re doing my party. This is the date.” I said to the person who he was with, “What’s the budget?” And they said, “Whatever you need to make it good.” ’

Sometimes the theme emerges from the location. ‘We did an event for a client with a beautiful house in Tuscany,’ says Pastori. ‘We found an abandoned tobacco factory on her estate so we had the idea to make the party like Andy Warhol’s Factory. We had a huge industrial table seating 200 people and everyone ate Campbell’s soup out of the tin.’

While they’ve turned down most brands, they made exceptions for Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Christie’s. When the auction house called on their skills in 2014 for an Art Ball, the pair were initially stumped as to how to make such a ‘sensible space’ fun. But when they followed a member of staff carrying a painting into storage, they stumbled upon the place where the antiques are appraised, and decided that everyone should arrive at the party at the goods entrance as a work of art, to be photographed and valued — whereupon enormous crates exploded and characters from paintings, including Frida Kahlo and Picasso’s Weeping Woman, popped out.

Despite months of research and meticulous planning, ‘there are always near-disasters,’ says Pastori. ‘That’s part of it. The last few days [before an event] are so crazy — I don’t sleep.’ But any mistakes are effortlessly styled out. ‘With Louis Vuitton we were not ready to open,’ says Moore. ‘As guests were arriving we had people they must have thought were performers, dressed up, trying to turn lights on.’

Having conquered the fashion and art party circuits, the next step is to roll out their parties to the public, with a ticketed event happening in March. Details are still hush-hush. ‘We want everyone to join the cult,’ says Moore. ‘But initially it’s going to be on an intimate scale. It works really well when you feel like you’ve been changed personally.’

Does it ever feel a bit sad, after they’ve sweated over something for months, to see the dream dismantled after just one night of debauchery? ‘No, that’s the beauty of it,’ insists Pastori. ‘Everyone comes together for that one moment and then it’s happened.’

immersivecult.com