Poiret's youthful addiction to the theater served as a springboard for his use of dramatic presentation in the promotion of his fashions. From his earliest days as a couturier, he recognized the publicity to be gained by costuming famous actresses in stage productions, as did many other couturiers. Between 1898 and 1900, while still serving his apprenticeship with Doucet, Poiret designed costumes for Réjane in the melodrama Zaza and for Sarah Bernhardt in L'Aiglon, in which she played a young son of Napoleon I. Poiret's costume made the aging diva look like an adolescent, emphasizing her still-slim figure, and was a forerunner of his future embrace of the Empire silhouette. Throughout his career, he used the theater to promote his designs, even during the long decline of his couture house's later years.

A larger-than-life figure with a larger-than-life ego, Poiret's flamboyant lifestyle also attracted publicity and added to his renown. In a city and an era famed for its banquets and parties, his stood out: each "fête" was an elaborate costume drama with decorations by modern artists and an historical theme. He assigned roles to his friends. They were required to play characters of all periods from ancient times to the seventeenth century and to dress the part. "Sets" were provided by his artist friends. His most famous party, in 1911, was entitled "The Thousand and Second Night" and was based upon the classic tales told by Scheherazade in A Thousand and One Nights. Three hundred guests were invited to attend in "ancient Persian" costume. Dufy and Dunoyer de Segonzac painted a huge vellum awning to hang over the buffet table, and Oriental rugs covered the floor. Dufy designed the program. Guests included photographer Edward Steichen, whom Poiret employed to take photographs of his collections; painters Kees Van Dongen and Guy-Pierre Fauconnet; the actor Édouard de Max; and Lucien Vogel, founder of the avant-garde fashion magazine Gazette du Bon Ton, which he was to establish in 1912 and which employed the illustrators Poiret also patronized.(9) Poiret also gave lavish dinner parties that were likely to be attended by Picasso, Apollinaire, and Dufy, as recorded by fellow guest Marie Laurençin.(10)

Other artists had similar backgrounds and took part in similar activities. Isadora Duncan, as a young woman in Paris, provided herself with an education in the cultural world of the capital. Together with her brother, she attended the Louvre, the theater, the Exposition Universelle of 1900 with its Oriental temples and exotic music. Nearly penniless at first, they got to know the city by walking its streets and elegant public spaces. Her career began in earnest when she was asked by Parisian intellectuals to dance at their salons, which she did barefoot wearing only a Greek tunic. Some years later, when she was famous and the mistress of the wealthy Paris Singer, heir to the Singer Sewing Machine fortune, she held her own lavish parties, one of which took place at Versailles. There in the park were marquees with every sort of refreshment from caviar and champagne to tea and cakes. After this prelude, in an open space on which tents had been erected, "the Colonne orchestra...gave us a programme of the works of Richard Wagner...After the concert, a magnificent banquet...lasted until midnight, when the grounds were illuminated, and, to the strains of a Vienna orchestra, every one danced until the small hours."(11) Duncan became one of Poiret's better clients, putting aside her Greek tunics in favor of his high-waisted, slender gowns, which she wore, like her tunics, without a corset. She also employed him to design the interior of her studio in Neuilly in 1908.