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The Los Angeles wildfires continue to upend Hollywood’s social calendar as event organizers and producers grapple with how to appropriately proceed amid catastrophic devastation.
While there have been many theories circulating online in recent days regarding large-scale events — Jean Smart suggested non-televised award shows while Rosanna Arquette floated the idea that the SAG Awards, Oscars and Grammys pivot to become telethons — a veteran Hollywood and fashion insider is now weighing in to push back against all the cancellations and postponements.
“Everyone is so upset. No one wants anything to be canceled,” says Ashlee Margolis, founder of the Beverly Hills marketing, brand and events firm The A List. “People want community. They want to talk, they want to be together. People need to get back to work. We cannot have what happened during [the COVID-19 pandemic] and what happened during the Hollywood strikes. So much business was lost in this town during those periods.”
Margolis has a long history in the trenches of Hollywood events, from producing and logistics to seeding and curation. She said that seeing a wave of events taken off the schedule in the wake of the wildfires — a slew of Grammy events have been canceled while many award shows or ancillary events have been postponed — has been heartbreaking and will impact the bottom lines of countless individuals and companies who support such events.
“To have events canceled now is going to crush all of us,” she adds. “I can’t pay my staff if everything is canceled. We all rely on events to go on.”
In the wake of the fires, Margolis turned her 90210 showroom and office into a relief headquarters where members of her team and volunteers have been gathering donation items like clothing, toiletries, beauty products and other essentials. As reported earlier this week by The Hollywood Reporter, the project will stay open for at least five months and is currently partnering with the Los Angeles Unified School District Education Foundation to assist displaced families and employees.
Margolis said she knows of event vendors and staffers (bartenders, valet drivers, florists and more) from the impacted areas of Altadena and Pasadena that “need this work” to pay bills. She said that events can and should align with a charity or nonprofit partners to support relief efforts as a way to give back, even under the lights of an event.
She adds that she’s been in touch with fellow insiders like fashion stylists, publicists, event producers, production assistants and deejays, and the message she’s getting from everyone is the same: The show must go on. The conversations inspired her to create an Instagram Reel to highlight the message and that clip can be seen below.
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