How balloons blew up, and took on another life
On the brink of 40, Gev Danielian could have gotten a Porsche, gambled or had too much to drink. Instead, in June 2021, he planned a prudent celebration at his home in Los Angeles and allowed himself one mild regression. He blanketed his lawn in several hundred balloons.
Dozens and dozens of balloons in a palette of matte neutrals, and several accent balloons streaked to mimic Carrara marble. At first, Danielian had been skeptical when his event planner, Edgar Hay, proposed them.
But he came around. “Balloons are balloons,” Danielian said. “You can get balloons wherever, but the color combination he used?” He marveled at the effect, and so did his guests, he said. People stood up from dinner, and one after another sidled over to the installation, several dozen grown men and women, mesmerized, he recalled.
Scroll through Pinterest now, and behold their omnipresence. The firm Orbis Research reported that the balloon market worldwide was worth $636 million in 2019, and that was before the pandemic seemed to spur an increase in interest not just in balloons themselves, but also in ever more complex designs.
The simple foil-letter balloons that Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” made so ubiquitous were cute. Globular balloons with more sophisticated geodesic patterns than some residential homes are now an expectation.
Balloons were invented in 1824, when an enterprising scientist stacked two sheets of rubber, sprinkled flour between them and sealed the sides to create perhaps the most valuable ravioli of all time. They have since become a staple of children’s parties, awkward school-auditorium dances and sporting events. But what balloons have not tended to be is aspirational — until now.
No single explanation accounts for their cultural ascendance, but the pandemic was a factor, moving more parties outside, and from elaborate hotels and event spaces into people’s homes. The reliance on livestreamed events also helped. And because this is a social-media-fueled trend, there’s a Kardashian at the center of it all.
A few weeks before the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic in March 2020, Khloé Kardashian hosted a shower for her pregnant friend Malika Haqq. There were pastelcolored roses, a five-tier cake, customized swizzle sticks, what appeared to be a smoke machine, and two enormous moss bears.
But when photos of the shower hit the internet, the masses fixated on the balloons: at least five balloon arches, two balloon stanchions, one balloon-studded wall and several cloudlike balloon structures suspended from the ceiling.
“We did Malika’s event, and then the pandemic happened, so we don’t know what caused that impact,” said Jamie Andrade, 34, who founded the event design firm Balloon & Paper with her husband in 2011. The couple produced piñatas and other festive accouterments for almost a decade before balloon demand compelled them to focus on inflatables full time.
The morning of the shower, the business had 5,000 followers on Instagram. A day later, Andrade recalled, the number had swelled to more than 50,000. In the months that followed, requests for balloon installations poured in, the owners said, for parties and weddings and one circus-themed bat mitzvah. Since Haqq’s extravaganza, Andrade said she has built balloon set pieces for Drake, Katherine Schwarzenegger and Lizzo. Kardashian hired her for two more events. Andrade’s most involved installations can cost upward of $25,000.
The founders of Airigami, a design firm in Rochester, New York, have been building immersive, large-scale balloon sculptures for clients as far away as the United Arab Emirates and Japan since 2005.
In 2017, artist Lauren Messelian invited them to produce a “flower” wall for New York Fashion Week at Spring Studios. Hundreds of balloons were twisted and “planted” in different shapes and sizes to create a vertical garden. For a mall in Qatar, Airigami constructed a pair of heels made out of fist-size balloons. The finished shoes measured more than 6 feet tall.
It’s not uncommon for the Airigami partners, Larry Moss, 51, and Kelly Cheatle, 45, to recruit a mathematician to calculate the precise dimensions of a proposed sculpture. Once Cheatle has the specs, she will use Adobe Illustrator to map patterns and construct a model for scale. Then, an order is placed for the particular balloons that a sketch requires.
Qualatex and Tuftex are two of their preferred popular brands. Cheatle is partial to Anagram for foils.
Moss and Cheatle do their best to travel with their balloons. When work takes them overseas, Cheatle will pack the bare minimum in clothes and fill the rest of her checked suitcase allotment with latex. Moss has sometimes found it cheaper to hire an extra crew member to travel with additional balloons than to ship the material via international mail.
When it’s time for the installation, dust is a constant antagonist. Balloons are so static-filled that Cheatle sometimes has to lint roll them one at a time.
When one of their events is over, the fun starts. After almost two decades in business, Moss and Cheatle have perfected the art of the pop. The couple has tried a range of sharp objects — scissors, box-cutters, even a small spikecovered ball, which makes quick work of large-scale sculptures.
If an event hasn’t concluded when it’s time for Airigami to load out, the staff can enact a “quiet pop,” snipping the tops of balloons with a blade to minimize noise. Moss often invites the catering crew to join his team. It can be a good outlet for their frustration at the end of a night, he said.
But the new balloon fervor does not come without a cost. Climate activists point out that even biodegradable balloons are slow to decompose, and popular “balloon releases” are just a form of photogenic littering.
Balloons Blow, an organization that aims to educate the public about the effects balloons have on animals, people and the environment, opposes all balloons and advocates the use of streamers, flags and kites for event decor instead. (“Blow bubbles!” said Mary Vosburgh, one of its founders. “You’ll get the same lift without the harm!”)