The Beautiful & The Damned

Date:               Saturday 29 October 2011
Location:         Protocol, Vauxhall

The poster for The Beautiful and the Damned promised a classy venue with costumed beauties, and on this front the event did not let me down. 

The venue, Protocol, shared an entrance with another event, but the security deftly pointed people into the entrance they needed. Protocol boasted a comfortable booth area for some semi-private sitting, and two dance rooms that were appropriately decorated with spiders and a lot of webs. Though both dance rooms had their own bar, differing staffing levels sometimes left the bar 3 people deep. On the plus side, each room also had a welcoming tray piled with marshmallows and gummy candy to keep your blood sugar levels peaked. 

At 11pm the club was only about a third full, but many more women and a couple of men continued to arrive so by midnight the club was comfortably full. Kudos to all the people getting into the spirit of Halloween - I was impressed that so many people had more fake blood that I did! A special mention to the party of friends that included Freddy Kruger and Jason from the Friday 13th movie franchise, but my stomach actually turned when I spotted the fire-fighter with a cockroach crawling out of putrefying cheek flesh- good effort!

The crowd was quite varied, I'd guess the age range was 20's-40's, with a good number of unfamiliar faces. I particlarly like the policy of a women's night, with men as their guests. I think this works well to encourage women's mainly spaces that are comfortable and fun. 

So far so good. Where I was a little disappointed was in the merging of the styles of music between the rooms. What promised to be an RnB room, and an 80's/indie room soon seemed to merge into two rooms with very similar music. The indie room tried to be too modern and fell into a mainstream rut; whilst the room that had RnB at the beginning on the night, rocked out to 80's hits later in the night. Luckily the rooms were separated only by an entrance (with very good sound insulation) so it was a quick trip to investigate where the best tracks, or hottest costumes were! But there wasn't enough distinction between the rooms for my short attention span.  Also, drinks were a bit on the expensive side: a can of beer and a drink with mixer priced at over £9!

Overall, I had a good night and will keep a look out for other similar parties, especially if there's another chance to get the costume makeup on.

Review by Tali and Vaux