On the evening of 4 October 2025, the incandescent glow of Paris will flicker back to the Roaring Twenties, when jazz, champagne, and boundless dreams set the city alight. To mark one hundred years since Joséphine Baker’s legendary Paris debut, Le Relais Plaza at Dorchester Collection’s Hôtel Plaza Athénée joins forces with the historic Théâtre des Champs-Élysées for a tribute evening of rare glamour and cultural resonance.
The night unfolds as pure theatre. At 8pm, guests slip into premium box seats at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, the very stage that once bore the bold, hypnotic rhythms of Baker herself. Here, a bespoke performance retraces her meteoric rise: from her arrival in 1925 as a 19-year-old dancer from St. Louis to her ascension as the Golden Girl of Paris, a muse to the Jazz Age and an icon of the Roaring Twenties. The evening’s choreography captures the electric pulse of a woman who dared to dance to her own music—and, in doing so, redefined an era.
At 10.30pm, the celebration flows to Le Relais Plaza, Hôtel Plaza Athénée’s legendary brasserie where haute cuisine and haute couture have mingled for over a century. Beneath crystal chandeliers, a special menu and effervescent drinks await. Vivid Art Deco décor, glittering costumes, and live swing performances revive the glamour of a bygone Paris, as if the golden dawn of the jazz age has been distilled into a single, unforgettable night.
The Golden Girl and Her Unstoppable Brilliance
No name embodies the exuberance of the Roaring Twenties quite like Joséphine Baker. Born in 1906 in St. Louis, Missouri, she arrived in Paris with little more than determination and an untamed sense of style. Within months, she became the symbol of a new, liberated modernity. Her infamous banana skirt and mischievous Charleston dances at the Folies Bergère electrified audiences and established her as the era’s most dazzling performer.
But Baker was more than a stage sensation. She was a cultural and political trailblazer: the first Black woman to star in a major motion picture (Zouzou, 1934), a devoted member of the French Resistance during the Second World War—earning the Croix de Guerre and the Rosette of the Resistance—and later, a passionate civil-rights activist who spoke at the 1963 March on Washington alongside Martin Luther King Jr. Her adopted “Rainbow Tribe” of twelve children from different countries embodied her dream of a world beyond racial division.
This is the woman celebrated on that October night: an artist, spy, humanitarian, and symbol of fearless freedom who defied boundaries and redefined what it meant to live beautifully and bravely.
A Night Draped in Parisian Elegance
Every element of the Hôtel Plaza Athénée experience honours Baker’s legend. From the silvery gleam of Montaigne Avenue to the brasserie’s jazz-infused atmosphere, the hotel, long a haven for haute couture and creative spirits, sets the stage for an evening of unbridled sophistication. Guests will dine on a curated set menu inspired by the flavours of the 1920s, accompanied by vintage wines and crafted cocktails that echo the effervescence of champagne-fuelled soirées.
The setting itself is poetry: Le Relais Plaza’s Art Deco interiors shimmer with mirrored panels and polished wood, while a live jazz quartet spins the syncopated rhythms that once set Baker dancing across the Parisian night.
The Legacy Continues
This centenary tribute also inaugurates a season of four special performances at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, each exploring a chapter of Baker’s extraordinary life—her Parisian triumphs, her wartime heroism, her global humanitarian mission. It is a fitting homage to a woman whose life was itself a masterpiece of reinvention.
From €600 per person, the evening includes exclusive theatre seating, the gala dinner, and a chance to step into the golden light of history. Reservations are made directly through the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées.
For one luminous night, the Golden Girl returns, and Paris becomes once more the dazzling stage where she first taught the world how to live without limits.
Bookings to be made directly through Théâtre des Champs-Élysées via this link.
25 Avenue Montaigne, 75008 Paris, France
