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VIPs of RSVPs

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Times Staff Writer

WHEN Diane von Furstenberg, Paul Smith or Dolce & Gabbana want to throw a party this town will never forget, they call Bryan Rabin and David Rodgers.

Working with budgets in the millions, sometimes bigger than those for music videos and advertising campaigns, there is no limit to what these ringmasters of nightlife can do.

For the record:

12:00 a.m. Aug. 18, 2006 For The Record
Los Angeles Times Friday August 18, 2006 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 50 words Type of Material: Correction
Party planners: A Style Notebook column in Saturday’s Calendar section about party planners Bryan Rabin and David Rodgers incorrectly stated that guests at a Christian Dior party last winter at the Getty Center dined in the galleries. Dinner was served in the entryway of the museum, not in the galleries.

They persuaded the Getty Center to let them use a gallery for a dinner last winter, where guests of Dior dined among precious paintings, and they wrangled Rufus Wainwright to give his first West Coast performance poolside for Women’s Wear Daily’s 2002 shag-carpeted pre-Oscar bash. They are the fevered minds behind the nameplate necklace invitations to Madonna’s “Music” record release party, held at a Koreatown disco, and they transformed the old Holiday Inn off Sunset Boulevard and the 405 into Studio 54 for socialite Crystal Lourd’s 40th birthday, complete with a reenactment of the Bianca Jagger-on-horseback scene.

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Rabin and Rodgers have reinvented the Hollywood party, producing not just corporate photo ops but also whole fantasies inspired in no small part by the years they spent in L.A.’s over-the-top ‘80s club scene. Until they came along, luxury brands were reluctant to spend money on lavish events in L.A. But with Rabin and Rodgers making the introductions, the fashion industry met Hollywood and relationships were forged. Whether they realized it or not, these party planners were laying the groundwork for the phenomenon of celebrity dressing at their unforgettable events for Cartier and Hermes, Dior and Chanel.

“They make every fashion event into a party,” says Lisa Love, the West Coast editor of Vogue magazine, who has hired them to produce several events. “The design element is always really strong, but not ostentatious like it is with a lot of event planners in Hollywood. It’s geared toward fashion, not entertainment.”

But on Wednesday night, for the first time, Rabin and Rodgers threw a party just for themselves. Yes, it was the penthouse at the Chateau Marmont, and the guests included Lindsay Lohan, Marilyn Manson, Dita Von Teese, Zooey Deschanel, Rachel Zoe and China Chow. But it wasn’t the typical celebrity posing scene. Makeup artists mixed with transvestites, publicists with stylists, and everyone nibbled on pizza and sipped Veuve Cliquot while basking in the full moon over the L.A. skyline.

“The party is about saying thank you to everyone who helped us,” Rabin, 37, said over hummus and pita on Larchmont Boulevard earlier in the week. With newly platinum blond hair, he is the extrovert to Rodgers’ introvert, a person you just have to sit back and let wash over you.

20-year friendship

Rabin, a native of the Chicago suburbs, was a competitive figure skater who landed in L.A. at 17, after a career-ending injury at the Olympic Training Facility. Rodgers, 39, came to L.A. from Philadelphia to be a professional dancer, before moving into music video styling.

The two met at a restaurant in 1986 and became fast and best friends.

“He had a great aesthetic eye,” Rabin says. “He had a house in Laurel Canyon and 1950s furniture. He had every issue of Interview magazine. I had never met anyone like him.”

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Rabin supported himself by becoming a commercial actor and model in L.A. and Tokyo, and hit the club scene with his friends every night. Boys and Girls was a regular haunt (“They only served blue drinks,” he remembers), as was Helena’s (the early home of house music), Cathouse (Guns N’ Roses regularly performed), Scream (a venue for Jane’s Addiction) and the Euro-crowded Flaming Colossus.

“L.A. was having a moment,” Rodgers says. “Melrose Avenue was cool, Helmut Newton was out every night with Annabel Schofield, Greg Gorman, Herb Ritts, Sandra Bernhard, Barbara and Timothy Leary and Tina Chow. We saw a different mix then; it wasn’t just about celebrities. No one wore designer clothes. It was about, ‘Are you cool now?’ ”

In 1990, he began promoting his own events, including an after-hours party at a former costume shop on Hollywood Boulevard. Then, in 1994, he started Cherry, which became the longest-running weekly club in Hollywood. (It closed in 2002.) He created an atmosphere that was Fellini-esque, kept an eclectic guest list of club kids, rock ‘n’ rollers and celebrities, and booked the hottest musical acts -- Hole, Smashing Pumpkins, Marilyn Manson and the Beastie Boys. He also promoted Lounge, Prague and Highball, and became one of the first to champion the revival of lounge culture.

But by his 30th birthday, he had burned out. After seeing friends die of AIDS, Rabin wasn’t sure he wanted the rest of his life to be spent going out every night. His savior was his friend Arianne Phillips, the influential costume designer and stylist who had just started working with Madonna. She suggested that he put his hat in the ring to produce the record-release party for the pop star’s 2000 “Music” album.

Rabin went to the pitch meeting with an unusual press kit, designed around Madonna’s look at the time: a white crocodile handbag filled with gold necklaces, tacky gold-tipped cigarettes, “everything a coke hooker would have,” he says. He dumped the bag’s contents on the conference table and the Warner Bros. Records execs started laughing. The gig was his.

To help design what became his career-defining event, he recruited Rodgers from New York, where he was working as a photographer alongside Bruce Weber and Peter Beard. The two chose a Koreatown disco for the party, closing three blocks of Pico Boulevard outside. Fans watched as guests posed with a Cadillac on hydraulics and George Clinton arrived in a white horse-drawn carriage.

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Not long after, the two went into business together.

“Now, when I think about what we didn’t know,” Rodgers says. “We didn’t know you could hire people to get permits for you, so we were down at City Hall getting them ourselves.”

Comeback event

After Sept. 11, the parties stopped and the company almost went under. Living on Taco Bell, they put the word out that they would work for almost anything. Again, a friend came to the rescue, suggesting they produce the “White Hot Diamonds” pre-Oscar party for Women’s Wear Daily in 2002.

Held at a Midcentury Modern house in Hancock Park, in conjunction with the Diamond Information Center, the event showcased $23 million worth of stones in still-life scenes under plexiglass -- one featuring white mice and diamond necklaces on an exercise wheel.

The era of celebrity dressing had officially begun, and representatives of every major magazine and international fashion house were flocking to L.A. and hiring Rabin Rodgers Inc. to throw parties and introduce them to the market.

Now, they produce dozens of events each year with Rodgers working on design, and Rabin working the social angle. They coordinate guest lists and gift bags, musical acts and hair and makeup. They work with budgets anywhere from $50,000 to $4 million and take 22% of the overall budget as their production fee.

For the Dior watch launch dinner, they transformed a Getty Center gallery into a mod dining room, with calla lilies on Lucite tables by Charles Hollis Jones, Eames chairs and a napkin folded to display a quote from John Galliano. Kirsten Dunst, Lisa Eisner and others struggled to take in the unreal scene.

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“Millions can go into an event,” Rodgers says. “And we are in awe at just how strong the fashion-Hollywood connection has become, that Paris looks to Hollywood to get ideas.”

They prefer to produce events with no more than 350 to 400 on the guest list, and not just flavor-of-the-month celebrities. “Brands want press, they don’t want a drunk girl in the pool,” Rabin says.

In June, to mark the opening of the Georg Jensen jewelry shop in Beverly Hills, they took over the biggest bungalow at the Chateau Marmont. The crowd -- Brooke Shields, Tatiana Von Furstenberg, Margherita Missoni -- was just how they liked it, a mix. And the highlight of the evening was a fashion show that had models wading into the swimming pool while wearing millions of dollars worth of jewelry.

What you will never find at a Rabin Rodgers party is the ubiquitous logo-laden backdrops. “For this demographic that doesn’t work,” Rodgers says. “It’s not a NASCAR race.”

So, for a 2003 bash that took over the entire Chateau Marmont to celebrate an ad campaign Stella McCartney designed for Absolut, they used the vodka’s logo in miniature, screen printing it on wallpaper, throw pillows and quilts. The invitation was a room key, and everyone had a different experience, depending on where they were in the hotel. A blue grass band played in one room, while a gospel act sang “Amazing Grace” on a balcony in another. Some guests stayed until 6 a.m.

“Yeah, that one,” Rodgers admits, “is a hard one to top.”

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