The Candlelight Club: Prohibition Paris

The Candlelight Club is a clandestine pop-up party with a 1920s speakeasy flavour, in a secret London venue completely lit by candles. Each event offers a one-off cocktail menu with special themes, plus live period jazz bands and vintage vinylism. Guests are encouraged to dress in 1920s outfits and receive an email two days before revealing the location.

This time we cross the Channel to revel in Jazz Age Paris, where US bartenders fleeing Prohibition brought American jazz and cocktail culture to mingle with European Bohemianism. Harry MacElhone founded Harry's New York Bar on rue Daunou, where he invented such classic drinks as the White Lady, the Bloody Mary and possibly the French 75 and the Sidecar. Harry's Bar was a haunt for ex-pat Americans such as Ernest Hemingway and his friend F. Scott Fitzgerald, also escaping Prohibition—a world evoked in the 2011 Woody Allen movie "Midnight in Paris".

The city was a crucible for the era's avant garde—American-born dancer Josephine Baker, whom Hemingway called "the most sensational woman anyone ever saw", found its citizens more willing to accept her daring style: at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées she was an instant success performing virtually nude. Her "Danse sauvage" was executed in a skirt made of bananas. She later acquired a pet cheetah who would occasionally escape into the orchestra pit and terrorise the musicians. (Josephine also starred in a few movies, some of which we'll be projecting at the party.)

Tamara de Lempicka meanwhile was painting the rich and Bohemian in her famous "soft cubist" style. And in 1925 the city hosted the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs—which gave birth to the term "Art Deco". To celebrate all this artistic activity, we'll be having a tablecloth painting competition at our party—crayons and felt tips will be provided.

To get your toes tapping we have live gypsy jazz—a style popular in Paris in the 1920s—from Café Manouche. Dropping crucial vintage shellac all night will be vintage DJ Auntie Maureen. We'll be serving cocktails from the era plus a bistro-style supper menu.