Base your party on a book, a great work of art or a historical period. It gives your guests a chance to dress up in something they'd never ordinarily wear and gives everyone something to talk about in that awkward first hour.

The last great society hosts and hostesses of the 20th century loved a theme, and as a result, their parties have become near-mythic events in the public imagination. The Rothschilds famously drew inspiration from Proust's In Search of Lost Time and the Surrealist art movement for their most memorable soirées, while Count Carlos de Beistegui’s Le Bal Oriental transformed high society into a living fresco inspired by Tiepolo’s 'The Banquet of Cleopatra'.

But be prepared for rebels. Anaïs Nin's diary recounted her refusal to dress up in 1920s costume for a party thrown by the editor Leo Lerman, "Why should I go to a party looking like an awkward clown?" Above all, a theme should allow room for your guests to be true to themselves.

In a literary twist, Nin took inspiration from Martha Graham's dances for a party she wrote into her novel, Ladders to Fire. "I like the party section. It is like one of Martha Graham's ballets; it was inspired by them. It is full of rhythm and colour. It is like a mobile, a modern painting. It satisfies me."

The best parties are the ones you didn’t attend, so keep the intrigue alive and the outsiders guessing by curating your guest list with precision. Limit your guest list to a single zodiac sign, as Grace Kelly did with her 40th Birthday Scorpio Ball. Or take a page from Truman Capote’s playbook and craft a delightfully idiosyncratic roster, as he did for his Black and White Ball, inviting 540 of what he simply called “the people I like”. Gloria Steinem, writing for Vogue, recounted how Capote had to disconnect his phone in the weeks before the event, fending off pleas from those desperate to secure an invitation.

Be sure to extend invites to your most gifted and creative friends—you never know whose name will go down in history. Anaïs Nin’s diaries read like a roll call of artistic brilliance: she partied with Gore Vidal, André Breton, Maya Deren, and Peggy Guggenheim. But her best description is of architect Frederick Kiesler "kissing ladies hands. But as he is four feet tall, it makes a woman feel like the Statue of Liberty."

Likewise, society hostess and patron Lady Ottoline Morrell transformed her Jacobean mansion, Garsington, in Oxfordshire into a vibrant hub of intellectual and creative exchange, hosting luminaries such as Aldous Huxley, T.S. Eliot, Dora Carrington, and Virginia Woolf for lively and inspiring gatherings.

Surround yourself with such characters, and your party will be more than a social event–it will be a story. And besides, your artistic guests might just prove invaluable for what comes next....

A party, at its best, is an act of creation—so why not let it spark others? Throughout history, hosts and guests alike have turned gatherings into moments of artistic invention.

Take Lady Ottoline Morrell, the famed society hostess, who chronicled in her memoir how writer Katherine Mansfield once dashed off a play to be performed impromptu at a Christmas party. The avant-garde filmmaker Maya Deren went even further, hosting a soirée solely to create her experimental film Ritual in Transfigured Time, an evening vividly recounted by Anaïs Nin, who was herself one of the guests. And at the legendary Proust Ball, thrown by the Rothschilds, photographer Cecil Beaton transformed the occasion into high fashion, capturing the elaborately costumed attendees in a striking series for Vogue.

The mise en scène sets the tone, so leave no detail to chance. Sometimes handmade and exuberantly tacky leaves a more lasting impression than sleek minimalism. Think of Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, wrestling an absurdly oversized Christmas tree into her tiny apartment and adorning it with shoplifted balloons.

Lady Ottoline Morrell, despite her aristocratic status, recruited friends—including D.H. Lawrence (who famously parodied her as Hermione Roddice in Women in Love) to paint the walls of Garsington Manor gold just in time for a birthday fête. Anaïs Nin's diaries recount how she dragged mattresses off beds to create Bohemian-style floor seating or transformed a room with the dramatic simplicity of white silk draped over a screen.

Even the fabulously wealthy Rothschilds took a DIY approach to their infamous Surrealist Ball of 1972. Tables were covered in unnerving sculptures of found objects including dolls heads, taxidermied tortoises and high heeled shoes. Guests entered through a cobweb-covered labyrinth, and invitations and menus were hand-written and painted.