QUINTESSENTIALLY Lavish David Whitehouse meets Q Events’ Caroline Hurley and Anabel Fielding to ask just what IS IT THAT makes a perfect party
It’s a perfect Soho morning outside
Quintessentially HQ. The air is crisp, the sky bright, the streets busy and littered with that unique brand of magic the old place has. It’s so perfect in fact, you’d think it had been organised by Caroline Hurley and Anabel Fielding, the team that in five years has made Quintessentially Events the most revered events company in Britain. See, perfect days are what they do, but perfect nights are what they do even better. Events don’t get any more
glamorous, opulent, lavish or downright decadent than the ones Caroline and Anabel throw. It’s why in such a short time they’ve attracted some of the world’s most esteemed clients; people who really know how to party. Their events include the visually stunning 2010 Elle Style Awards in consultation with design visionary Fiona Leahy, Vogue’s Fashion Fantasy Party and throwing the opening night celebrations of the V&A’s Golden Age of Couture Ball – the single biggest party on London’s fashion calendar in 2007 – as Caroline explains. “It was the most star-studded party, 460 people, almost all of them famous, all in the V&A. We worked with the designer Michael Howells who does a lot of work with Dior and Galliano. He put together this inspired look based around classic couture images and the traditional flowers of the fashion houses. It was eight months in the planning, all for one incredible night, and the guest list
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included Lily Cole, Thandie Newton, Kate Moss, Mario Testino and Prince. He created such a buzz. In a room full of hundreds of celebrities, when Prince walks in, everything stops. It could not have been more fabulous.” “It has to be said,” agrees Anabel, “there was nobody there that wasn’t a somebody.” Having worked together for more than 10 years, the pair are the obvious, nay only, point of call for anyone that wants the ultimate bespoke evening, be it a wedding, a birthday or an excuse to gather 400 friends for the night of their lives. However, they admit that there is only one special ingredient needed in the making of a great party, no matter how big it is: the guests. “It’s all about the guests,” nods
Caroline. “If the guests want to get involved and have fun, that’s what you need. We make it so that it’s all but impossible not to have the best time. Some guests have a harder shell to crack before they start to have fun but we always find a way to manage it.” “We are also firefighters,” explains
Anabel. ‘We are there to keep problems away. It’s only very occasionally that we get to sit back and talk about how cool or glamorous it all is because anything can go wrong at any time. And that’s why we are there, to make sure that they don’t. We are ultimately responsible for the very big days of some very important people, so you need to get
it right the first time. Even the smallest things cannot go wrong. If one person is a little bit rude as you check in your coat, it’s simply not good enough.” It’s this attention to the finer
details that means theirs is a bespoke service unmatched by any other. It is, as Quintessentially aims to be, a very personal exercise throughout. “We work extremely closely with people. We can be friends and confidantes or their party pals, whatever it takes to make their event perfect. We can help them be brave enough to make the one bold gesture that will make their day really special, and although we have visions for most elements, we work with each client to make sure every aspect is perfect for them. It’s the ultimate in bespoke event planning,” says Anabel. “Even if it takes nine months,” laughs Caroline. “In that respect it’s like a pregnancy. Nine months of hard work, but at the end it is so, so worth it.” Each party, they agree, is completely
different, as is the entertainment provided. Only recently, at the request of a client, they had a tented village built on a Devonshire beach for a pirate-themed birthday bash. Their events have ranged from a champagne reception on a private yacht in the middle of the Monaco harbour watching the Grand Prix cars fly by, to a night which ended in observing scores of ultra-high-powered City lawyers cautiously stumbling across a lawn in drag.
They have built a small-scale
replica of a stage from a U2 world tour, complete with big screens and pyrotechnics on a private beach in the South of France, and they have somehow commandeered ‘a giant inflatable jellyfish-style thing with a woman doing an aerial trapeze act inside it’. There is one party that stands out among a whole diary full of great nights though: their own. “The Diner des Tsars was our coup
de grace,” smiles Caroline. “We sat down and decided to do the most brilliant party for charity. We did an Imperial Franco-Prussian-themed celebrity dinner in the Guildhall, which is a gorgeous stone building, very grand. We had Cossacks on horseback, models in full Russian costume serving caviar and an eight-course meal presented by Tom Aikens, all inspired by this original feast from 1867 that we based the event on. It was massively ambitious.” “And it was amazing,” continues
Anabel. “To have the opportunity to go to someone with the reputation of Darcey Bussell and ask her to dance for us in such an intimate setting, well… It makes for an exceptional night. We really pulled it off!” And as we step back out into the morning sunshine, you somehow know they will again. And again. And again after that.
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