All White Parties are events or celebrations where the color theme is white. These elegant events take place at nightclubs, on rooftops, on boats, and more, advertised all over-from Los Angeles to New York-as well as around the world.
But where did these parties come from, and how did they come to be? Let's delve into the history of the All White Party and how it gained a following in the Black community.
These parties can be fundraisers, birthday parties, circuit parties, or celebrations. The only requirement? Full-white outfits are a must! White parties today aren’t always thrown for specific causes (although many are still hosted for their original causes), but the essential theme stays the same: by wearing the same color, there’s a universal concept of inclusion.
When you go to most formal events, you’ll see a variety of different colors and looks. There’s ample room for individuality and personal expression. Unlike red and purple, white is perhaps the ultimate summer color.
When people think of White parties, it brings summertime in The Hamptons to mind. But people have been wearing all white attire across many cultures and eras for quite some time.
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Blending elegance and excess may be the hallmark of the white party itself. It’s become a fixture in Black communities in the US, an intergenerational “grown-and-sexy” gathering where everyone wears white and Black beauty, swagger and sartorial creativity intersect.
There is a malleable grammar to the white party: it has a uniform - flowing linen is the party’s textile of choice. And the party endures because it’s an ebullient celebration and communal spectacle wrapped in a culturally relevant package. The white party salutes the perpetual power of Black people and Black culture to transform.
Part of the white party’s appeal is that it democratizes that flyness. Looking good in white is accessible to anyone across age and class.
The Origins of White Parties
Consider its history a tale of multiple genesis. In the 1980s, Frank Wager and Jorge Suarez created the first white party to raise money for charities for HIV/AIDS prevention and awareness. In Paris, François Pasquier hosted Dîner en Blanc in 1988 and requested that all attendees wear white. The concept took flight, not only in Paris but in many other cities.
François Pasquier hosted the first known white party in France called “Dîner en Blanc.” Over 10,000 guests were given a secret location the day of the party and told to wear white and have fun.
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Phelps said he noticed color-themed parties among Black Detroiters in the late 1990s, and the cream editions captured his attention.
Now Le Dîner en Blanc happens globally, with thousands of people dressed in white, dining al fresco.
“The last all-white party I attended was last December in Ghana for a brunch party,” said Myrick.
The dinners were started more than 30 years ago in Paris, when François Pasquier invited friends to celebrate his family’s return from Tahiti where they had been living, launching what would become the popular dinner series. His home’s yard was too small so he invited friends to a picnic in Bois de Boulogne, a large public park. Pasquier asked everyone to wear white so the partygoers could find each other.
White parties became popular in the 1990s within Black communities because of Black celebrities and hip-hop moguls. The person who popularized the All White party in the Black community was likely Sean “Diddy” Combs. From the late 90s into the 2000s, his All White soirées were the talk of the town.
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But white parties got their most fabled come-up with the ones Diddy threw in St Tropez and later at his East Hampton estate (back when he was better known as Puffy). From the late 1990s to 2009, Diddy’s bashes brought together It Girls, hip-hop moguls and entertainment icons.
“Diddy popularized them in the 2000s with his parties in the Hamptons,” said Sadé Council, a marketing strategist.
From the late 1990s to 2009, Diddy’s bashes brought together It Girls, hip-hop moguls and entertainment icons: Mariah Carey, Beyoncé, Lil’ Kim, Star Jones, Donna Karan, Leonardo DiCaprio, the Kardashians and Hiltons and LL Cool J all dropped in over the years. In August 2004, Aretha Franklin attended, adorned in a bedazzled duster and carrying a transparent tote. Jet magazine reported once on the flamethrowers and the luxurious surf-and-turf dinners washed down with Ciroc vodka. Another year, TMZ wrote: “Anyone not wearing all white was turned away.”
By Phelps’s second annual party in Detroit, he was also rejecting people for not wearing white. “The men had more trouble finding clothes,” he said. “But I had to not let them in just to make a point. Because if you let people not follow the thing, they’ll never follow the thing. Once they saw the girls in there, they found a way to get that white.” Phelps went to Detroit boutiques and department stores, requesting that they stock more white apparel. “Come March or April, their windows turned white. People used to say ‘It’s snowing’ when the white party came.”
A former hairdresser and nightclub owner, Phelps calls his annual soiree the “Original White Party”. So do plenty of other promoters, for whom bragging rights are paramount.
Will Phelps, a party promoter from Detroit, has thrown white parties since his 34th birthday in 1998. He commissioned a custom ensemble for his 2010 fete, requesting snowy fur on the pockets, zipper and the knot of his wide tie. Because Phelps’s philosophy is go big or go home, he tried to one-up himself from each party to the next. One year, he ordered a pair of white alligator boots. Another time, he mandated that only white cars be admitted to the VIP parking lining the street outside the club where the party was held. In 2018, five couples got married at the white party. And there was the year he advertised the event using muscular men decked out in tiny white swim trunks. Their pecs and abs bore invitations to attend the soiree, written in white body paint.
Not everyone can carry off a white suit with matching mink trim - in May, at that.
The Symbolism and Significance of Wearing White
The aesthetic pleasure of Black skin under white fabric seems a given - every person I interviewed for this story said some iteration of “it just looks good.” Tameka Foster Raymond, an Atlanta-based fashion designer and author, said robing one’s self in white boosts the mood. “When you’ve got on what we call your ‘crispy white’, you just feel good. You don’t want anybody to put their makeup on you. You don’t want to spill a colored drink on yourself. It makes you walk a little taller.”
Foster Raymond has styled many musicians, including Lauryn Hill, Jay-Z and Foster Raymond’s ex-husband, Usher (she masterminded his white suit-fedora combo and news-making entrance via yacht at the 2004 Video Music Awards in Miami).
White parties bind Black people together in mutual glorification of Black beauty. And that’s no small thing, even when it seems the parties’ supreme goal is a good unthinking baccanal. Whiteness has long symbolized purity and cleanliness. The color black and Blackness as racial category have often been identified with filth, depravity and deprivation, even monstrosity.
The concept of cleanliness - especially as it pertains to wearing white - can never be neutral for a people presumed prima facie to be dirty, whose ancestors include enslaved and free washerwomen who labored to ensure white people’s garments stayed white. Yet to be “clean” in Black vernacular also means to be dressed immaculately and utterly convinced of one’s flyness.
Foster Raymond plans to throw an all-white event for her son’s upcoming 16th birthday party and noted that the white party “is the easiest kind of party to dress for”, because a white T-shirt is always within reach.
The pageantry and the peacocking that takes place at white parties - whether you’re wearing a gown or a tank top - likely has roots in the past, according to Jonathan Michael Square, a historian at Parsons School of Design. Square noted the historical significance of African diasporic people’s knack for blending the sacred and the secular: “In a lot of Afro-diasporic religions, even African American Christianity, white textiles are really important. Think about baptisms,” he said. “A lot of Black people wear white to funerals, which is kind of counter to a Western tradition of wearing black to funerals. You tend to wear white at ceremonies or during a certain period of initiation into these religions. There’s a spiritual component, and even if people aren’t entirely aware of it, they’re still tapping into that history.”
That history is ubiquitous in cultural products and visual archives of Black life: Gordon Parks’s photographs of Nation of Islam women, a sea of white in their alabaster head coverings and dresses; new Divine Nine sorority sisters swathing themselves in “uninterrupted white” from head to toe; church ushers and acolytes in shimmering suits and frocks, the white-suited blaxploitation-esque models in Barkley Hendricks paintings. Wearing white sets a person apart, signaling individualistic sartorial flair or that you are part of some collective larger than yourself.
The cultural historian and curator Brittany Hutchinson attended her first white party when she was 25. She’d watched her mother, aunt and grandfather preparing for white parties as a child, and attending the event was a rite of passage for her, a sign that Hutchinson, now 38, was a sophisticated adult. In her native Chicago, there’s a special homegrown variant: an all-white cruise around Lake Michigan, complete with local steppers dazzling with their footwork. “Seeing my mom get ready for a white party was the introduction, but then my awareness grew through being around [older relatives],” Hutchinson said. “You just kinda absorb that information.”
She also practices a diasporic faith, Lucumi, sometimes known as Santería. Its followers frequently wear white after initiations or in chaotic times; Hutchinson might wrap her head in cloth to dispel confusion. White is associated with the orisha, or deity, Obatala, whom Hutchinson said “signifies wisdom, a coolness of temperament and a very measured, careful approach to decision making and mental clarity”. And while there may not be a traceable direct connection between the orisha and white parties, wearing white can mean you are protected or momentarily unsoiled by the grit of daily life. That message is not at odds with a satisfying white party romp, Hutchinson said. “A white party’s meant to be lighthearted and purely enjoyable.
Memorial Day marks the unofficial start of summer and the parties with all white-dress codes - and we know Black people love a white party. “I think Black folks like to wear anything that makes our melanin pop and white is as high contrast as you can get,” said Council.
From 1998 to 2009, Combs was the host with the most. Council noted that wearing white is not a practical choice, which adds to its cachet. “You tend to be extra-conscious and careful not to get anything on your outfit - so wearing all white is kind of daring and carefree, in a way.
Shay Myrick, a customer service professional, usually doesn’t like to wear all-white - “I try to avoid displaying my clumsiness” - but she attended a Diner en Blanc in 2018 on Governor’s Island in New York.
The color white in Western fashion is a symbol of purity and cleanliness, said Darnell-Jamal Lisby, assistant curator of fashion at the Cleveland Museum of Art. “White became synonymous with suffrage and, eventually, feminist movements throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.
“With that being said, we also see the color white, and shades of white and beige, particularly depicted in late 19th century and early 20th century art as a favorable color for aristocratic day dressing for vacationing and resort activities,” Lisby said. “Even earlier than that, white cotton dresses during the turn of the 19th century for empire silhouette dresses became very popular in the West for functional and fashionable purposes.
“Society has unfortunately also conditioned us to believe that white equals pure, innocent, clean, and good. So, while I don’t personally like to lean into that definition, it’s one that is perpetuated in our culture,” Council noted.
The idea of “summer whites,” or wearing white clothing between Memorial Day and Labor Day, dates to the latter part of the 19th century, when the upper class fled the heat and soot in newly industrialized cities such as New York and Chicago for their country homes. “From then, we see white become embedded in culture as this essential color to wear during the summer, expressing a high level of elegance and also comfort,” Lisby said.
Lisby said there’s a level of exquisiteness when everyone is dressed in white at a party that’s hard to ignore. “I even think about Sunday best clothing in the Black church and young girls who would be dressed in frilly white tulle dresses, signifying purity.
Channing Hargrove is a senior writer at Andscape covering fashion. In the summertime, we all love a soiree with champagne and al-fresco dining. Breezy linen fabrics. Crisp new shoes. The dress code? In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Diddy helped popularize all-white celebrations with his annual Hamptons event, where everyone from Rev. Al Sharpton to Aretha Franklin attended. Wearing all-white has long been a blend of sacred and secular for us. White clothing is significant in multiple religions across the diaspora, from baptisms to initiation periods. The color is also associated with the Yoruba deity, Obtatala, known as the king of the white cloth, beloved for his wisdom and compassionate leadership. Creating space for joy has always been crucial to our survival and liberation.
At the end of the day, white parties are about a sense of connection. They’ve been used to spread awareness about HIV/AIDS in the 80s and Black culture in the 90s.
If you're hosting a white party, decorate the space with white decor. That means white tablecloths, table settings, balloons, and streamers.
Yes, you can use non-white accessories at a white party, but make sure to respect the dress code. If you love color, let your accessories be the way you add that flair. Just aim for 90-95% of your outfit to be white to show that you’re honoring the theme and the couple’s wishes. Make sure your colorful additions complement your overall look without overpowering it. Metallics or pastel shades can also be a subtle way to add variety while keeping with the elegant vibe of a white party. It’s about finding the balance between expressing your personal style and being part of the celebration.
