Allison Sarofim and Stuart Parr Host a Journey Into the Future

It was a recent hit television show that famously posited that “time is a flat circle,” but it might as well have been the guests at Allison Sarofim and Stuart Parr’s annual Halloween fete on Saturday night: Each year the proceedings are themed around an artist, decade, or artistic movement (previous party themes have included Alexander Calder’s wire circus, The World of Picasso, and Gauguin’s Tahitian period), and this year focused in on the Italian Futurists. Or was it “the future?” Either way, guests were seemingly divided between the past (mustachioed men in black suits and bowler hats, à la Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, who penned The Futurist Manifesto).

The way we imagined the future in the recent past (a clutch of NASA-emblazoned astronauts, replete with helmets, led by Stavros Niarchos III, and some imposing intergalactic warrior types, including Lyor Cohen in gleaming metallic spandex suit and platform shoes), and direct references to the art (Lisa Marie Fernandez, sporting a printed backless unitard; a bevy of race car drivers and other nods to the artistic movement’s obsession with speed; and Vogue’s Hamish Bowles’s angular Thom Browne–crafted light pink suit and Gino Severini–inspired makeup). Shirtless servers circulated in white undershorts and sneakers or silver-studded bodysuits, proffering oysters and other light fare, while some guests withdrew to a waiting pizza truck parked outside.

Sarofim, as hostess, was resplendent, dripping with piled-on crystals (from headpiece to navel) above a narrow, sweeping marigold-colored silk skirt while greeting guests like Joan Smalls (a spandex-y “ninja”), Proenza Schouler’s Lazaro Hernandez, André Balazs, and John Varvatos (another space invader), while Parr’s white suit had seemingly served as canvas for an Giacomo Balla sketch.

The duo’s West Village townhouse had been swept up in the futuristic fever, too; interiors were very white, with lithe robot-suited and gadget circuitry–painted performers contorting on platforms, languidly perched inside mod, egg-shaped chairs, or in the case of one (who seemed suited for battle with Glenn O’Brien as Star Trek’s Captain Kirk), wielding what appeared to be a sparking welding torch as she flexed to the music. But rest assured, the future looks to be a decidedly friendly place Fabiola Beracasa was among the guests who manned slim, wheeled robots that whirred along the ground level displaying a video feed of the operator’s face as captured from their iPhone (think FaceTime, only decidedly more, um, futuristic).