Nick Gray from creative lighting and visual design practice Renegade was commissioned by show producers Bacchus to light the main venue at the British Fashion Council’s ‘London Collections : Men AW 2013’ menswear showcase, staged at the Hospital Club in Covent Garden.
Additionally, Gray lit two high profile off site shows - Aitor Throup’s ground-breaking ‘New Object Research’ at The Dog Eared Film Studio in Covent Garden and Jonathan Saunders’ collection at Victoria House in Holborn.
Renegade also sourced and co-ordinated all the necessary lighting equipment and supplied their own hand-picked crews.
Hospital Club
This was the official British Fashion Council (BFC) show space at the hub of the event, featuring up to four shows a day .
The space was almost square and surrounded by white walls, seating bays and runway floor. A central ‘spine’ truss was installed for which the Renegade team braced the house rigging points with scaffolding bars to maximise the weight loading, and also to gain every millimetre of available height!
The truss was rigged with around 50 x ETC Source Four PARs.
Thirty Coda 4 floods were used to rear light the draping around the exterior of the room and eight 2K fresnels front lit the set. The front array of lights comprised a selection of Source Four profiles with varying lenses, and the seating areas were highlighted with 1K fresnels.
The whole space was daylight adjusted to provide crisp, clean, complimentary lighting that was ideally balanced for photography and video.
Lighting was controlled by Rob Gawler running one of Renegade’s Chamsys MQ100 consoles, with a 4 port node / laptop as hot backup. Dave Ross looked after the dimmers and power distribution, and the equipment was dry hired by Renegade from White Light.
On the ground and first floors of the Hospital Club, Gray used a series of custom Deco PAR lights on stands to illuminate a number of different exhibition areas, featuring various designer collections.
10 Downing Street
For the event’s press launch at 10 Downing Street, hosted by Prime Minister David Cameron (primed for the occasion by fashion doyen wife and Smythson’s creative consultant Samantha), Gray enhanced the atmosphere with some strategically placed battery powered GDS LED up-lighters and speech lights.
Aitor Throup’s New Object Research
THE uber-cool clothing collection of the event – featuring The Shiva Skull Bag and 21 other ‘archetypes’ – was revealed at the Dog Eared Film Club, a small studio space oozing industrial chic, painted grey throughout with lots of exposed RSJs and style.
Trending on every tweet stream, Throup deconstructed the seasonal regime of fashion, producing a series of fabulous timeless products using new materials, the innovative approach for which he is known and a confrontational presentation technique.
Throup is also Kasabian’s artistic director, so he and Gray have collaborated on numerous tours and memorable shows with the band in recent years. Kasabian’s Serge Pizzorno DJ’d for the show which was the talk of the town and the whole three day London Collection - Men event!
Gray lit the works – also all grey and modelled on impressive grey mesh mannequins – to emphasise the message – with stark, dramatic shadows and silhouettes – raw, brilliant and unapologetic.
He used the low ceiling height and the natural darkness of the space to his advantage to accentuate the mood, look and feel of the presentation.
Forty custom lengths of scaffolding were cut then clamped or screw-jacked into the roof space to get each lighting fixture – all Minuette fresnels - precisely where Gray wanted it in relation to the exhibits.
The lamps were chosen for their small size, daylight colour temperature, output, soft edged effect and barn doors which enabled a tight focus … and the results were sinisterly spectacular
Matt Rimmer was Renegade’s crew chief and oversaw the installation.
Says Gray, “This was a fantastic show to work on – lots of room for imagination, invention and creating a provocative and vibey atmosphere. After working with Aitor’s on stage designs it was a real pleasure to collaborate in a different and equally creative and exciting context”.
Jonathan Saunders
The basement of Victoria House in Holborn is a charismatic minimalist warehouse event space with trashed breezeblocks, exposed RSJs and impressive architectural styled pipe-work which has been painted white throughout.
The design presentation was a static installation comprising a gallery area for model set ups and a large clothes rack display.
Gray again integrated structural elements of the environment like low ceiling height into his design, cross lighting the clothes racks with bold slices of light from 42 x Minuette fresnels creating bold, bizarre and anticipatory shadows shooting across the floors, all adding to the aura and impact.
It was daylight corrected and the lighting set at low levels to add a hint of autumnal seasoning and truncated light.
At either end of the clothes display section, Gray added wall projections – produced by high power Panasonic machines rigged in the ceiling – showing specially edited content originated from the brand campaign material. This introduced appropriate colour and the flicker of animation around the space.
GDS uplighters scattered around the walls added a bright a warm glow to the edges of the daylight adjusted lighting of the clothes.
The gallery area was lit simply and beautifully in well balanced daylight – ideal for all the photographers - using around 30 x ETC Source Four profiles hung on a truss flown in the roof space. The wall was decorated with big graphics of the brand activation and media campaigns.
Renegade’s crew chief for this show was Chris Fyfe.
Gray sums up, “It was brilliant to work on the ‘London Collection – Men’ event again and experience the buzz of it expanding and developing with such a diversity of presentations and designers. It was also a great opportunity to light works in some amazing locations”.