031 Collection Fashion Show

13 May 2011


  With courtesy Brandon Bunyan   Recently, Mr Price, Ice Models and S&A Marketing started an initiative to put Durban back on the fashion show map where it once ruled during the 80’s and 90’s. Durban designers have always pushed style boundaries and earned themselves a seat amongst SA’s most talented and accomplished fashion designers. As well as eight top “Local Legend” invited designers, Mr Price aimed at finding and nurturing up and coming talent in Durban. Eight young rising design stars were selected to compete for the ND (New Designer) Awards.  This was Durban’s “031 Collection Fashion Show.”     Brandon Bunyan of Black Coffee Design was asked to find a large, never before used space, design a set unique to anything previously seen at a fashion show in South Africa, fit in maximum seating capacity for the space and to provide full technical supply. “We looked at underground parking at the new soccer stadium, warehouse space in industrial areas and eventually found a very central Barn shaped Sports centre that houses 5 badminton courts, tucked away between Kings Park Rugby and Moses Mabida Soccer Stadiums. After consultation with Engineers and the Fire department, the badminton association was very happy to house this event in their 13m high “warehouse-like” structure.”    

One of the world’s top supermodels, British born Agyness Deyn, was invited to Durban by Mr Price as a VIP Judge and stylist for this event. Deyn has featured on the covers of Vogue, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone and ID magazine. She has won the British Fashion Award “Model of the year” and has appeared in ad campaigns for the world’s top Fashion designers and cosmetic houses.

  Executive Producer Tiffany Prior from Ice Models and Choreographer David Gouldie insisted on two (6 metre high by 3 metre wide) screens framing the ramp entrance. This was achieved using two HD truss screens rigged vertically and masked off with Black Vinyl covered 7.2m high flats with two Sanyo PLCXF47, 15 000ansi projectors. Another six  (4 metre by 3 metre) truss screens with Sanyo XP200 7000ansi projectors were used on the sides of the venue. They also wanted 2 main ramps 23m long with a “hidden” central ramp between the central seating, adjoined with exit ramps through and behind the audience (these doubled up as fire exits).” We needed to seat 650 people with unobstructed view and no more than 4metres away from a ramp from any chair, including a large SA fashion media riser. We built a 3metre high scaffolding bridge above the ramp entrance for dancers and the designers’ bows.”    

Mr Price requested a top fashion show Lighting Designer to be contracted from SA or Cape Town Fashion Week. Brandon Bunyan said, “Why import when we have one of the country’s top lighting designers here in Durban?” With the approval and excitement of the Producers, Michael Broderick was contracted to do the design. As this was not to be a normal fashion event, Choreographer David Gouldie was very keen to work with Michael and use his vast theatre and fashion show design experience.

  The first lighting challenges he pointed out was that, unlike a traditional single ramp fashion show, three ramps in one set design meant three separate generic rigs and because of the top height of the 6 meter high projection screens the lighting truss would have to be 10 meters off the ground to avoid obstruction between projection and lighting  gear.     Using 148 lighting fixtures including Selecon 1000watt Fresnels, Selecon SPX Profiles and Source 4 Profiles all controlled by Avolites Power Cubes. Separate 24 meter long H40 trusses were rigged above each of the three ramps with front, back and side fill lighting trusses. In Addition, 16 x Robin 600LED washes, 16 x Robe Colorspot 575AT, 8 Robe Colourwash 700 and Colourmix 250’s were used in the design. The central ramp was made from a 20meter long by 1meter wide see-through Polly carbon stage so Michael up lit models using Morflay 8 units. The System was controlled by a Grand MA2 Light.    

The initial sound set-up did was too large and boomy for the high, hard, barn-like design of the badminton courts. Bradley Elipan re-designed the system by spreading out 8 individually rigged  JBL VRX speakers and 8 x SRX 700 wedge monitor, between the projection screens, throughout the venue. Only 4 double 18 Subs were needed and were placed under the raised seating.    

  The building exterio r and bar marquees were lit up with 100 red LED Par cans (those handy little problem solvers) and “031” gobos in 4 Robe 1200 profiles. The entrance was a tunnel under the technical riser lined with plasma screens.     After a six day gruelling set-up 49 points had been rigged, 300 stage pieces had been assembled, 400 square metres of black vinyl had been rolled out and secured, the hair dryers and steamers were in action and no-one had lost their cool. Mr Price were thrilled with the results of the three shows and were not expecting the intense magnitude of what Ice Models and Black Coffee Design had presented in such an empty space.