Inside The Parties You Missed At Miami Art Week 2025
Silencio’s invite-only three-night takeover at Basement at The Miami Beach EDITION delivered the kind of high-octane nightlife scene that made its wristband the most coveted accessory of Art Week.
Deonté Lee/BFA.com
For a certain crowd, Miami Art Week has never been just about the art. Some never set foot in the Miami Convention Center, home to Art Basel, the week’s marquee fair, and I may or may not be one of those people. I first caught the Basel spell in 2010, back when my jeans were shredded and skinny, and my flannels were bleached and tied around my waist. I’ve been coming consistently ever since, alongside what feels like half of downtown Manhattan. The parties—often invite-only, sometimes featuring surprise pop-star performances (over the years, I’ve seen Cardi B, Miley Cyrus and Drake, to name a few)—are just as impressive as the fairs and often feature art in some capacity, even if it’s only a sculpture looming over a hotel bar. Fifteen years in, I know the real action starts long before the weekend and that a short and sweet stay is enough to experience the peak of Art Week—especially considering I’m pushing forty.
This year, I landed on Tuesday morning for a four-night stay and by golden hour had already found myself weaving through sci-fi-chic beach installations with designer-clad influencers and art-world darlings. Over the following few nights, I experienced everything from a visceral Japanese women’s wrestling league tournament to a legendary Parisian nightclub pop-up featuring dizzying DJ sets and an impossibly cool, slightly intimidating crowd. Each night delivered exactly what this former wannabe downtown It Boy once lived for and now enjoys with a more “I’m on vacation” mindset. And yet, as exhausted as I was by my final night and excited to hibernate until the spring, I had a sneaky feeling I’d be back early next December for some much-needed vitamin D, glamour and a side of art.
Keep reading to see what stood out most from my blurry, beautiful four nights in Miami.
Surreal Art Installations and Chic Oceanfront Terrace Soirees
The Shelborne By Proper unveiled “The Observer Effect” by acclaimed multimedia artist Pilar Zeta.
James Jackman
On Tuesday, December 2, The Shelborne By Proper unveiled Argentinian multimedia artist Pilar Zeta’s “The Observer Effect” on the beach, a striking series of large-scale prismatic portals. By 5 p.m., a stylish swarm of curators, editors and influencers was already weaving through the sci-fi-chic maze in their designer shoes, somehow not sinking into the sand while angling iPhones for the perfect shot. Between my bubbling-up social anxiety and the fact that I don’t spend more than ten minutes in the sun as a responsible, borderline geriatric millennial, I snapped my photo, then made a beeline for the lobby bar.
Inside, a head-turning beaded crop top and an Old Hollywood brunette bob sashayed through the lobby, and of course it was the always glamorous DJ and producer Mia Moretti. A few hours later, she DJed at the hotel’s lush terrace after-party, where the cool kids clutched passion-fruit margaritas, danced and lined up for caviar bumps.
DJ and producer Mia Moretti brought her signature sparkle to The Shelborne By Proper’s Pilar Zeta after-party.
Sancho
Around 7 p.m., I had drifted from one chic oceanfront hotel’s cinematic terrace to another equally exquisite terrace at Andaz Miami Beach, where Milan-based jewelry brand DoDo and artist Pilar Zeta were hosting a divine dinner party as part of WE ARE ONA’s four-day immersive Art Week experience. Cultural tastemakers such as Moretti, Bách Buquen, Miranda Makaroff and Beverly Nguyen were seated around three surreal glass-and-stone tables designed by Dutch artist Sabine Marcelis, along with what felt like enough downtown New Yorkers to fill East Village’s Lucien. I briefly mistook a severely slicked-back, bleach-blond bob for Dorinda Medley of “The Real Housewives of New York City,” then Tilda Swinton, which says everything about my judgment after cocktail seven. “RHONY” OG Jill Zarin, however, was unmistakable at the end of my table.
The calm before the influencer-packed storm at the WE ARE ONA dinner, with Sabine Marcelis’s surreal glass-and-stone tables on display.
Matt Borkowski/BFA.com
Something must have been in the Miami air, or maybe it was the complimentary cocktails, because I abandoned my pescatarian phase for a mouthwatering braised short rib off the José Andrés–helmed menu. I also abandoned my low-key first night in Miami plans and instead ended up back in the Shelborne’s retro-chic lobby alongside several of my impossibly cool dinner attendees and off-duty publicists, where bottles kept appearing on ice, music blasted, and I woke up with a few fancy new Instagram followers, a preview of the week ahead.
Sukeban’s Japanese All-Female Wrestling League Unleashed Style And Full-Throttle Theatrics
Midnight Player versus Babyface was a high-energy showdown to remember at the Sukeban World Championship.
Deonté Lee/BFA.com
Wednesday night was overloaded with invite-only parties, but the Sukeban World Championship Fight was the one event I’d been counting down long before the wheatpasted hot-pink posters started spreading across my East Village neighborhood. Founded in 2022 by designer Olympia Le-Tan and her brother-in-law Alex Detrick, the Japanese all-female wrestling league—an electrifying high-fashion phenomenon with a cult following—returned to the Magic City for a sold-out takeover at Miami Beach Bandshell. Before the show, it felt like the candy-colored sensory overload you get after a day of exploring Akihabara or Harajuku in a jet-lagged daze. Merch tables overflowed with kaleidoscopic Sukeban gear and keychains I instantly convinced myself I needed, and food stalls served Japanese bites, including a perfectly pillowy egg-salad sando that tasted like it came straight from a Tokyo konbini. Editors, stylists, locals, internet personalities and familiar faces like Leah McSweeney, Isaac Hindin-Miller, Gabrielle Richardson and Kenny Anderson crammed the ring, iPhones raised, vape clouds drifting overhead as DJ Crazy Legs kept the energy frenetic.
All eyes were on rap superstar JT performing in the center of the ring at the Sukeban World Championship.
Deonté Lee/BFA.com
When the lights dropped, wrestlers stormed in wearing latex catsuits, psycho-meets-kawaii baby-doll dresses, wild face paint, sky-high wigs and mega-punk mohawks. They flipped from cute to ferocious in seconds, diving off the ropes, executing cartwheels that transitioned into piercing high kicks, body slams and pigtail-pulling that sent the place into steady roars. At one point, “RuPaul’s Drag Race” alumni Gottmik and Violet Chachki rolled out a giant pink jack-in-the-box that burst open to reveal a latex-clad surprise performer. The main event had Ichigo Sayaka of the Harajuku Stars defeating Atomic Banshee of the Vandals to become the new Sukeban World Champion, but the chaos didn’t slow down from there: Miami rap star JT hit the stage—well, ring—to perform her song “Girls Gone Wild,” a track just as in-your-face and charismatic as the tournament we had just witnessed. After Sukeban commissioner Bull Nakano announced it was JT’s birthday, she beamed under the lights as the crowd launched into a lively, likely inebriated rendition of “Happy Birthday.”
Miami Art Week’s Celebrity-Studded Party Paradise: The Miami Beach EDITION
When it comes to Art Week parties, no one does it like The Miami Beach EDITION. The eternally hip hotel was where half the fashion-art crowd somehow kept ending up, no matter where their night began. Throughout the week, the property hosted a steady stream of invite-only soirées across its swanky grounds: design insiders packed into the elegant, greenery-filled Lobby Bar for the Achille Salvagni and Manolo Blahnik gathering; LATAM Airlines and Costa Brazil drew a hyper-stylish crowd at Tropicale, the hotel’s palm-fringed poolside bar; Tom Ford Eyewear’s glowing cube on the sand became one of the week’s most relentlessly photographed backdrops; and Kid Cudi hosted an intimate private screening of Echoes of the Past, a documentary highlighting his creative process.
Evan Ross and Alton Mason turned heads in their shades at the Miami Beach EDITION’s Art Week parties.
Mike Vitelli/BFA.com
The imaginary award for the most celeb-and-art-world-attended dinner of the week went to Google Shopping’s celebration at Matador Room, toasting its collaboration with artist Lauren Halsey. At the post-dinner party, the room was awash with a guest list that could rattle even the calmest publicist: the HAIM sisters (or at least two of them—I was drinking, don’t quote me), Evan Ross (I did not spot Ashlee Simpson, unfortunately), Alton Mason and a parade of Very Important Art People everyone else seemed to recognize. According to my best friend, pop superstar Kesha also stopped by; I must have missed her somewhere between yapping giddily at Carmen Carrera in the bar line, fishing for gossip from “Selling Sunset”’s Amanza Smith like I was moonlighting as a TMZ reporter, and simmering down the fever pitch thanks to R&B singer Ravyn Lenae’s soul-soothing performance.
Paris’s iconic Silencio returned to Basement at The Miami Beach EDITION for three nights of late-night Art Week revelry.
BFA
Believe it or not, Silencio’s wristband—not Art Basel VIP passes—was the week’s most-wanted accessory. The Paris-born nightlife institution staged a three-night takeover at Basement, the hotel’s subterranean boîte, featuring DJ sets from Yves Tumor, Benji B and The Dare. The line outside had the familiar Fashion Week tension: publicists with iPads, confidently dressed hopefuls weighing their chances, and the understanding that not everyone would make it in. Picture this: a red-light-drenched, low-ceilinged room heaving with fashion people, Art Week regulars, famous faces and Miami night owls under a canopy of glinting disco balls. It’d be understandable if you lied about getting in—it was the only place that mattered after 10 p.m. for those three exhilarating nights.
