What New Year’s Eve Looked Like In The 1970s

With dutiful family time over, New Year’s Eve is a moment to part ways with the year in glamour. It’s just such a shame that the most stylish bash took place some 40 years ago.

As the ball dropped on 1977, the worlds of Hollywood, fashion and art collided in giddy ecstasy at Studio 54. For just 33 months, the iconic New York club was an epicentre of celebrity culture. Fueled by hedonism (and probably a great deal of cocaine) before it was dramatically shut down by the FBI, it has been fêted by history as one of the most glorious parties that ever was.

On the 31st December 1977, Grace Jones performed as Bianca Jagger, Liza Minelli, Andy Warhol, Halston and Michael Jackson watched on. Diana Ross was nestled on a silver couch alongside the clubs infamous owner Steve Rubell while half-naked dancers dangled from swings aloft the stage. Anything and everything went. fter all, this was the club where Bianca Jagger infamously held a birthday party where she rode a white horse.

For NYE event planner Robert Isabell organised for the dance floor to be filled with 4,000 kilograms of glitter ‘You felt like you were standing on stardust’ attendee Ian Schrager later explained, ‘People got the glitter in their hair, in their socks. You would see it in people’s homes six months later, and you knew they’d been at Studio 54 on New Year’s.’ As fleeting as this evanescent nightclub was, four decades on it's legend still lives on.