Immersive Worlds
Immersive Event Design
Ten worlds, built to order, for people who would rather their guests were somewhere else entirely.
Ten immersive worlds, turning. Choose one and step inside.
Ancient WorldsAntiquity at a scale that makes the modern world disappear.
High SocietyGatsby’s champagne and Downton’s stiff upper lip, both done seriously.
DiscoveryExploration, expedition, and places that reward the curious.
FantasyMagic played straight, without a wink to camera.
GastronomicWhere the food is the narrative rather than the interval.
HorrorDread built properly, which is far more about restraint than gore.
Literature & StoriesA novel you can walk into, and a mystery that resolves by dessert.
Love & RomanceThe biggest stage a love story can be given.
Sci-Fi & EpicWorlds that could not exist, engineered so they hold up close.
ChristmasThrough the wardrobe, or the Ghost of Christmas Past as your guide.
What is an Immersive World?
An immersive world is an event designed as one thing from the start — the architecture, the light, the sound, the service and the food all telling the same story, so a guest stops noticing they are at an event.
The word gets attached to anything with a projector in it. What we mean is narrower, and harder. We design for private clients, luxury brands and cultural institutions, and the work is world-building: a guest comes through a door, arrives somewhere that does not exist, and stays there until the cars come. The studio is in London and we build wherever the work is.
Decor comes last. It is the visible edge of decisions made months earlier, and it cannot rescue something that was never designed as one thing.
How The Work Is Done
OneWe design the arrival first.
We design the arrival first.
People decide what they are in before they have put anything down. So the way in gets drawn before anything else: what they pass through, what they can hear, who meets them, and what they are not allowed to see yet. That holds whether the way in is a door, a gate, a jetty or a track across a field.
TwoWe spend the budget where people keep looking.
We spend the budget where people keep looking.
Most budgets go on what sits at table height, and that is the first thing people stop noticing. Everything above and beyond it — ceilings, walls, canopies, a treeline, the sky — costs less for the ground it covers and changes a place far more.
ThreeWe pick colour under the light it will actually be seen in.
We pick colour under the light it will actually be seen in.
A scheme chosen in a studio is not the scheme people get. Under candlelight terracotta reads gold, cool pinks go grey, and a white you liked turns cream; in full sun the same scheme does something else again. So colour is chosen on site, under the light it will have when people are there.
FourWe plan sound with everything else.
We plan sound with everything else.
What a place sounds like on arrival, in the middle and at the end are three separate decisions, and all three get made while the design is still on paper. Booking a band at the end is not the same thing.
FiveWe leave something unexplained.
We leave something unexplained.
If everything has an answer early on, people stop exploring. A door that never opens, a path nobody mentions, a performer who will not break character — that is what keeps people moving for as long as it runs.
Where They Have Been Built
Hundreds of worlds built, and we have never repeated one.
Most of the places we work in were never meant to hold an event — museums after hours, private houses, galleries, gardens, coastlines, buildings with opinions of their own.
Among the worlds built in them: a Surrealist Ball for private clients, a fundraising world for War Child, a Tuscan summer inside Waddesdon Manor for the Rothschild family, a Winston Churchill world staged in period, and an immersive adventure with the US Navy Seals for Panerai. Also built: a voyage on the Orient Express from London to Paris; a toyshop that ran as a pop-up show for four weeks; a Marie Antoinette afternoon tea in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles; a sweetshop in the grounds of Westminster Abbey; and Wise Airlines, a galactic space flight for a global audience.
We are an approved partner of Langham Hospitality Group, Westminster Abbey, Waddesdon Manor, LSO St Luke’s, Hotel Café Royal and the Royal Horticultural Society — credentials that we are extremely proud of.
As featured in
Who builds these worlds.
Led by world renowned designer Christopher Mills, we are a global force of designers, makers and producers. The people who draw a world are the people who build it, cast it and run it on the day, and that is the whole reason it survives being looked at closely.
We are an approved partner of Langham Hospitality Group, Westminster Abbey, Waddesdon Manor, LSO St Luke’s, Hotel Café Royal and the Royal Horticultural Society.
What clients said afterwards.
Dazzling, daring, delicious, diva-tastic… I’m running out of D words! In short, it was a dream! Thank you so much. You’re a visionary!
I have sent quite a few thank you notes today but I don’t really know how to express the thanks I have for you and what you do for War Child. Personally — I couldn’t have done it without you, your professionalism but also your friendship and kindness. Event wise — wow!
What a world costs to build.
We get asked this before almost anything else, and we would rather answer it honestly than dance around it. Every world is drawn and costed from nothing, so there is no menu here and no per head figure we can hand you. What there is, is a range, and it is a wide one. You could invest £5,000 and ask us to dress your home with props, or you could ask us to build a world whole, cast it, produce it and take it into the millions. And the best bit is, we can do both.
- A piece of itfrom £5,000
Styling. Props and dressing brought into something you already have.
- Theme, design and entertainmentfrom £50,000
A theme worth committing to, the design to carry it the whole way through, and performers moving through it. This is where most people find us.
- A fully immersive world£500,000 upwards
Designed, built, cast and produced as one piece of work, and into the millions where the story asks for it. This is the one people talk about for years afterwards.
If you want to see where the money actually goes, our guide to budgeting walks you through it.
The date, the number, and where in the world you are thinking of.
And some of them are countries.
Mill & Fable is the same studio, further from home. Nothing gets built here. France has been standing for a thousand years — the work is getting you inside it on the days the doors are shut.
The Hall of Mirrors once the gates are locked. A curator at the Musée d’Orsay, there for you and no one else. The Dior and Chanel archives, which open on a name. Barrels in a château cellar the public never gets near.
It runs seven days or fourteen, for six guests, with someone travelling the whole way who knows why each of those doors matters.
The questions that come before a world.
Is this a theme, or a world?
A theme goes on top of a place. You choose a story, then dress to match it — the decor, the entertainment, the lot. A world starts before any of that. We decide what the place is first, and then the architecture, the light, the sound, the service and the food are all made to say the same thing. That is where most of the difference in cost sits, and it is why a world still holds up when you are standing inside it.
What does building a world cost?
There are three rough levels. From £5,000 buys styling. From £50,000 buys a theme, with the design and the entertainment to carry it. From £500,000 buys a world, built and cast and produced, and it goes up into the millions from there. None of it comes off a rate card. Every job is costed from scratch and you will have the figure in front of you long before you commit to anything.
How far ahead do we need to start?
Anywhere between a month and two years. A single element can be turned round in a few weeks. Something built from nothing, with a cast and a set and effects in it, wants nine to twelve months. Come to us with less than six and we will say what is still possible.
Where can a world be built?
Almost anywhere. We have worked in houses and palaces, in museums after closing, on mountains and in deserts. Most of our work starts in London and we produce globally. Very few of the places we use were ever meant to hold anything of the kind. And if you have not settled on somewhere yet, that is the easiest brief of all — we would far rather help choose a place than inherit one.
Do you design it, or build it as well?
Both. The drawing, the building and the running are done by the same people here, so whoever designed it will be there on the day. Nothing that makes up the world is bought in from somewhere else, which is why it survives being looked at closely.
What if the world we want is not one of the ten?
Then we build that one. The ten are not a menu. They are languages we have already written and can write again at any scale, and they are there to show you what is possible. A story we have never staged before is the brief we would rather have.
Start A Conversation
Send a date, a number of guests and a place. Or send none of those, because not knowing yet is a perfectly good place to begin. Either way you will get a straight answer about what can be done and what it would take to do it.