UK - 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.
The Hospital Club 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.
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.
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."
