Starting out as a DJ in Belgium in the 1980s, Carine De Mesmaeker eventually opened her own club in Brussels in the 1990s. She took a timeout in 2004, closing her club while keeping track of how the club scene for women was evolving. Monthly events, rather than seven-night-a-week bars and clubs, were becoming more popular. “People don’t want to go out every week to the same club and see the same people, they want something to look forward to, to get excited about,” De Mesmaeker says. In 2010, she launched Velvet Sixty Nine, a monthly Brussels-based party series which quickly became some of the biggest women-only events in Europe.
It was a natural step, then, that in 2015 De Mesmaeker launched Velvet Ibiza, a five-day five-night women’s festival on the Balearic island known around the world for its legendary nightlife. Happening this year from May 2 to 7, Velvet Ibiza takes over an entire 254-room resort, Hotel Club Cala Martina, and part of Hotel Paraiso Beach right next door, for a full slate of parties and social activities. The daytime sports and social events are as important—and perhaps even better attended—than the nighttime club experiences. Yoga, hiking, kayaking and water polo give attendees a reason to get up early in the morning.
De Mesmaeker loves the balance Ibiza offers between enjoying a good party and enjoying beautiful natural surroundings. She visits two or three times a year to make preparations for the festival. “In the 1970s, all the hippies went to visit for the nature, the peace and love,” she says. “For me, that’s an ideal combination, this spirit of freedom.”
Over the last six festivals (she missed a couple of years due to COVID-19), De Mesmaeker has developed several strategies for making attendees feel comfortable and open. There are ice-breaking activities, including speed dating on the first day, and tables where solo travellers can meet each other.
The single location creates an intimate vibe. “Everyone is together in one hotel. So everything happens in this hotel. That automatically creates a sort of family feeling,” she says. Non-guests, except those staying next door, can not attend the parties because of the way resorts and clubs are regulated in Ibiza. The festival also features a “fake” wedding chapel where attendees can get “married” for an hour, a day or the duration of the festival, though De MesMaeker reports that some real marriages have happened between attendees who met at Velvet Ibiza.
As a DJ, De MesMaeker takes the music very seriously. Although she doesn’t dictate playlists, she always listens to a set or two of the DJs she’s interested in before she hires them. It’s not 24/7 house music for the whole festival. “I try to bring a lot of variation to the music. We’ll play urban, disco, music from the 1980s, because the party attracts people of all ages, of all cultures. It’s not easy to please everyone,” she says. “Because everybody’s in the venue all the time, you’re controlling the soundscape over several days. It can’t all be the same.”
When she launched Velvet Ibiza, De Mesmaeker expected, because she’s well known in Brussels, that attendees would primarily be Belgian. But Americans make up the largest percentage of attendees. De Mesmaeker theorizes that American women are more familiar with this kind of festival because of events like Palm Springs’ The Dinah Shore Weekend. French, German, Spanish and Canadian women are also well represented; the main socializing language for the festival is usually English, with some Spanish thrown in.
Many of the non-European attendees decide to make the festival one stop in a longer European trip, often visiting places like Madrid and Barcelona while they’re in Spain. Some attendees will hit a couple of Ibiza’s mega-clubs, like Amnesia, Pacha or Privilege, while others won’t leave the resort for the whole five days. De Mesmaeker suggests that attendees, at the very least, check out the historic town, which is about a half-hour drive away, while they’re on the island. (Ibiza’s oldest club, Lolas, is located in the town and remains the most popular predominantly LGBTQ+ club on the island.)
Always keep in mind—Ibiza’s not very big. The first time she visited, De Mesmaeker made the mistake of pre-paying for a full tank of gas for her rental car, only to find out that, because the island is so small, she ended up using very little. “There are no highways, either,” she laughs.
Velvet Ibiza takes place from May 2 to 7, 2023, at Hotel Club Cala Martina, Ibiza.
