Wallpaper* teams up with HTC to toast the Design Awards at a special Paris dinner

The annual Wallpaper* Design Awards issue is a celebration of the very best design from the previous year and hence it makes sense that celebrations for the issue itself shouldn't be confined to a single event. And so it was that following the success of our London party, we shifted to Paris for an altogether more intimate affair last week.

The occasion was a special dinner, hosted by Wallpaper's Editor-in-Chief Tony Chambers, together with two of our Judges' Awards winners, Raf Simons and Konstantin Grcic (Best New Men's Collection and Best Furniture Designer respectively) in association with HTC, the sponsors of the Wallpaper* Design Awards 2010. A fittingly glittering event for the 'city of light', the dinner was held in Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, one of Paris' finest contemporary art galleries, bedecked for the night in visuals from the Design Awards issue.

It's often said that a party is only as good as its guests and in this case it was certainly a night to remember. The select crowd consisted of a great number of the award winners (wearing badges designed for the occasion, announcing the awards they had won) and the cream of the creative crop. Guests flew in from all corners of the globe (see the full who's who in the gallery above), not just to celebrate their own victories but those of their fellow creatives too.

Continuing the winners' theme, guests sat on 'Myto' chairs by Konstantin Grcic for Plank and ate with cutlery by Jean Nouvel for Georg Jensen (this was a substitute way of honouring the architect of our Best New Public Building - even for us the idea of shipping Nouvel's Koncerthuset from Copenhagen was a little too ambitious). Waiters wore Raf Simons' collaborative collection with Fred Perry in a nod to Simons' trio of awards (as well as Best New Men's Collection, Simons also picked up gongs for his own collection and for Jil Sander again in our Best In Shows award).

And as a lasting reminder of the occasion, guests were given Margriet Foolen’s Slowcooker for Royal VKB, winner of our Best Domestic Design, Accento serving utensils by Konstantin Grcic for Serafino Zani, an organic fragrance by Honoré des Prés, winner of our Best New Grooming product and an invitation for a tour of Nouvel's Koncerthuset together with tickets for two to see a show of their choice when next passing through Copenhagen.

The dinner itself was worthy of an award in its own right. Suitably salon in style for its Parisian location, guests toasted each other with Veuve Clicquot before sitting down to four-courses of the finest locally-sourced ingredients including hand-dived scallops from Erquy, slow-baked Serres chicken from Challans and Saint-Marcellin cheese and baby spinach leaves dressed with Paris roof-top honey. The dinner was rounded off with Sertãozinho Rainha Espresso Blend by Monmouth and a selection of fragrant teas by Lyn Harris of Miller Harris.

Given the intimate scale of the event, guests played musical chairs between courses and were we in any doubt as to whether a winning time was had by all, everyone carried the fun on into the early hours of the morning.