Marcella and Gregg Hymowitz at his “1983 prom” birthday party.
Marcella Hymowitz knew that she wanted to host a memorable celebration for her husband Gregg’s 60th birthday, but she wasn’t sure what to do for it. Inspiration struck when she was reminiscing about her own prom and Gregg reminded her that he didn’t go to his: “I looked at him and was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s it — we’re going to have a prom! I’m throwing you a prom!’”
The Hymowitzes are billionaires, so this wasn’t going to take place in a high-school gym. “I wanted to make it the most over-the-top ’80s prom ever,” says Hymowitz, who runs a workout and dance studio for children and adults called the Pearl NYC. “Think Dynasty — elegant, high end — not frizzy hair and neon,” she says.
Hymowitz booked ZZ’s Club in Hudson Yards for the November event, transforming the space into an absolutely bonkers 1983 prom. A few weeks beforehand, guests received mood boards for outfit guidance. “Most people ended up buying vintage 1980s prom dresses,” says Hymowitz, who wore a black velvet YSL dress from 1983 the first half of the evening, then changed into a 2025 Carolina Herrera dress that resembled Madonna’s in her “Material Girl” incarnation. “I chopped it nice and short and made it into a mini,” she says.
Partygoers arrived to find 1980s limos — and an actual DeLorean — parked outside the club. ZZ’s private wine cellar was lined with corsages and boutonnieres for each attendee, who were instructed to put one on before having a prom photo taken. The dessert room was piled with treats baked in the shapes of cassette tapes and floppy disks, and there was a throwback video of cultural touchstones playing on a loop. An L.A. set designer crafted a photo area to look exactly like an ’80s motel; the fashion photographer Ellen von Unwerth was camped out there taking people’s pictures.
And then there was the entertainment. Hymowitz’s lineup included Nile Rodgers of “Le Freak” fame, a choir that performed “Like a Prayer” before singing backup on “Smooth Criminal” with a Michael Jackson impersonator, and, later on, sets from DJs Sebastian Ingrosso of Swedish House Mafia, Mark Ronson, and Chachi. The event was documented on influential New Yorkers’ Instagrams; even Andrew Cuomo, who had just lost the mayoral election, was there.
“You can’t just throw a normal party anymore,” says event planner Caitlyn Mortimer, who lives in Tribeca and used to work in marketing at Coach and Tory Burch. “Everyone is very eager to throw a full-blown experience. You’re not just walking into a party. It’s like a Broadway show where guests are transported into a different world. It’s like, Where am I? Where are you taking me? Oh, we’re going to Italy? We’re going back in time? Amazing! And, of course, you have to dress for the occasion.”
To put it less enthusiastically, the theme party, formerly relegated to college-frat basements and hastily wrapped togas, is very popular right now with rich New Yorkers. And they’re going all out, embracing obscene excess. “Everyone is one-upping each other. Someone throws a party, someone wants to throw the next one, everyone’s posting it on social. How do you keep topping that?” says Mortimer.
Luxury-event planner Marcy Blum recently produced a number of theme parties — French bistro, Capri, the Hamptons on the West Coast, to name a few. “No question I’ve been seeing more themes,” agrees Bryan Rafanelli, another luxury-event planner. “I’ll be talking to my clients about fairly elaborate parties and then they’ll say, ‘We want it to be a costume party!’ And it’s like — okay! So we lean into it.” He recently pulled off an ’80s-themed 40th birthday. Rafanelli came dressed in a replica of an Elton John sequined jumpsuit, and he says many of the guests arrived in similarly involved getups. The costumes for these parties require time, effort, and, of course, money, he tells me.
Blum directed me to Patricia Voto, the owner of One/Of, an Upper East Side demi-bespoke clothing brand that creates special-event dresses (and more). “It’s been wild to see the push toward theme parties,” says Voto, who works with clients on made-to-measure looks. Voto says she pushes clients toward outfits that are “less on the nose” and ones that they might have a chance of rewearing. She says her company typically needs 12 to 20 weeks of lead time to create a one-of-a-kind garment. “We incorporate special touches — their name custom-embroidered inside, the family crest sewn into the clothing.” The least-expensive garment starts at around $5,000. “But then for fully bespoke outfits, we’ve done $15,000; we’ve done $30,000,” says Voto. “If you have $15,000 to spend on a dress, you usually have $30,000.”
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While women may love the dress-up aspect of these soirées, sometimes the guys get less into it. “It’s very hard for men, let’s face it,” says Blum. “Medieval fantasy — unless it’s a crazy person who’s going to come in a suit of armor, the men don’t know what to do. Once or twice, we’ve done costuming suites,” she says. “So we told the men to just wear a suit and we’ll help you out: ‘Here’s a fabulous hat with a giant feather’ or ‘Here’s makeup.’” (The men at the Hymowitz 1983 prom mainly wore powder-blue tuxes or 1980s-style cummerbunds that matched their wives’ vintage-couture dresses.)
What’s cool in the city inevitably makes its way to the suburbs, in a slightly less cool form, and friends in Westchester and Connecticut report that they have also seen a marked uptick in theme parties over the past two years. “People lost their minds during the pandemic and now want to make everything feel like it’s a holiday,” says Andrea Lavinthal, an executive director at People magazine who lives in Greenwich. “It’s one theme party after another out here.” She acknowledges the events in her town aren’t quite at the level of Mark Ronson spinning Madonna, but the idea is the same. “One weekend we’re Barbie and Ken, the next weekend we’re western, the next we’re disco. It’s gotten to the point that we have an adult dress-up bin in our attic that we have to get down at least twice a month,” she says. “It’s unfortunately not as kinky as it sounds.”
At first, says Lavinthal, she felt silly getting dressed up to go to a party. “Like, We’re in our 40s. What is this? ” she says. But now she looks forward to the events. “Otherwise, you’re just going to the same four restaurants, with the same four couples, talking about kids and vacations and ‘Should we split the Brussels sprouts to start?’ The theme parties shake it all up.”
I put out a call on my Instagram to hear if people had recently attended or thrown a theme party, and I was inundated with responses, ranging from the ordinary (Roaring ’20s, murder mystery, space cowboy) to the questionable (Real Housewives cast trip to Aspen, a “poor taste” party where one guest brought the Uber driver in).
As a person who finds adults playing dress-up deeply cringe, I was skeptical of this trend. Then I attended a Cher-themed 40th-birthday party at Jean’s on Lafayette Street in which I found myself in a plunging jumpsuit and enormous ’70s sunglasses, belting out “Believe” alongside an uncanny Cher impersonator. The kids were asleep, my husband was wearing a brown Prada suit (he already owned it; don’t ask), and we got drunk and danced till midnight. I had fun in spite of myself.
Lavinthal may have captured the appeal most accurately. “Being a 40-something mom is wonderful,” she tells me, “but sometimes I’d rather just be a cowgirl for a night.”
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