Renegade at London Fashion Week

9 March 2012

UK - Nick Gray of UK creative lighting design practice Renegade once again designed lighting for the main British Fashion Council (BFC) Courtyard Show Space at Somerset House for London Fashion Week (LFW) 2012.

Working for his client Bacchus, he also lit the new Embankment Gallery Space at Somerset House and the Portico Show Space. Offsite, Gray designed lighting for the high profile Burberry show in Kensington Gardens.

This is the sixth season that Gray has lit the BFC Space, which features up to six shows a day for the five day LFW event including some of the highest profile designers like Marios Schwab, Bora Aksu, Mark Fast, Jasper Conran, Issa London and many more.

His imaginative input has brought a fresh and new look which is flexible and adaptable to accommodate a dynamic selection of shows, simultaneously giving the all-important runway light coverage for the photographic and video crews.

This time around, Gray returned to a three truss look for the Space - a centre and two side trusses - which ran down the length of the 25m catwalk.

A hundred and seventy ETC Source Fours were the core fixtures of the rig, the majority fitted with 36 degree lenses, all focused carefully along the catwalk. The front array Source Fours were fitted with 5, 10, 19 and 26 degree lenses.

For maximum impact, the entrance / back wall was cross-lit with 10 Svoboda's with diffusion gel in front of them, all neatly masked from view.

Some collections brought in lighting 'specials', but the vast majority used the standard lighting rig. When using just the centre truss lights, Gray could close the space down for a very intimate feel. Bringing in lighting from the two side trusses opened it up, and if desired, also allowed the audience to be included in the visual picture.

The trussing and lighting fixtures were supplied by Neg Earth. Renegade provided the Chamsys MagicQ console to run the shows, programmed and operated by Paulus van Heijkant, and the lighting crew chief was Ben Howell.

(Jim Evans)