Nick Gray of London, UK based creative visual design practice Renegade designed lighting for the main British Fashion Council (BFC) Showspace at London Fashion Week SS14, together with a series of high profile off-site shows.
Gray is one of the UK’s best known fashion lighting designers, noted particularly for his unique crossover style which brings hints of rock “n’ roll in lighting to the runway.
The all-white BFC Showspace in Somerset House was designed by Bacchus – Gray is one of their regular collaborators – and this year he took advantage of the structure being a wider double apex tensile structure, which increased the space by at least 50% on previous years.
The interior was designed around two near identical spaces which could be either joined to make one massive U-shaped catwalk environment, or each side could be run individually for more intimate showcases.
The lighting rig in both halves of the room was duplicated, with one central HUD truss – chosen for its low profile and pulled tight to the roof beam with the motors sitting inside its void – flown above the runway, and a front array of lights at the media ends of each room.
The HUD truss – wider and narrower than standard trusses and braced at the bottom – was a perfect solution to utilise every single millimetre of available height. Having a central truss made the two spaces tall and slim.
Gray used around 180 ETC Source Four profile fixtures, fitted with a variety of lenses. Additional chrome Minuette fresnels were used as fill lights for the top end of each runway, mounted directly to the structure’s ceiling.
Lighting for the shows was operated by Dave Ross using a Chamsys MagicQ 100 console and Renegade’s crew-chief was Alex Murphy. Renegade co-ordinated the complete lighting equipment supply from Neg Earth and all the crew.
Gray worked in an eclectic selection of other venues for all his offsite shows and for the first time at LFW, Gray used Robe’s new MMX WashBeam moving light fixtures for two of his offsite shows.
