Offsite, he lit a variety of leading shows including Vivien Westwood, L'Wren Scott, Rocksander, Mark Fast, Kinder Aggugini and Pringle.
It's the seventh season that Gray has lit the BFC space, featuring up to five or six shows per day for a plethora of leading designers including Marios Schwab, Issa, Emilio de la Morena, Bora Aksu, Jasper Conran and numerous others.
Working for show producers Bacchus, Gray's lighting design featured a three truss format overhead - centre and two sides - running the full 25m of the catwalk.
The set this year featured a wider entranceway for the models and an elegant chevron-shaped wood / black carpet runway, all of which required a few changes to the lighting.
Around 170 ETC Source Fours were rigged on the overhead trusses and also used to make up the front array, while the entrance and back wall was lit with 10 strategically positioned Svobodas, all masked from view.
Lighting was operated by Paulus van Heijkant running a Chamsys MQ100, and Renegade's crew chief was Alex Murphy.
Highlights included an extra show for Mario Schwab, where Gray positioned active Sunstrips along the edges of the runway, cross-lighting it at floor / foot level. Ten Clay Paky Alpha Beam 300s fitted with custom rectangular gobos rigged on strategically placed rigging bars and a hazer were added to ramp up the atmosphere, and the show was run with lighting from the middle overhead truss only.
This morphed into London Fashion Weekend, which saw the installation of a stage in the Space with a live performance by Labrinth, for which Gray rocked-up the lighting substantially, adding 12 Martin Professional MAC Auras, 12 x CP Sharpies and a bunch of strobes.
There was never a dull moment when Vivien Westwood revealed her Red Label collection at the Saatchi Gallery, taking over a whole floor for the show, delighting the crowds with her rapacious talent and ability to shock and bring a simmering fusion of rebellion, idiosyncrasy and inspiration to the catwalk!
Gray's lighting design built up front arrays of ETC Source Fours in each of the galleries for photography positions and integrated these with the overhead house lighting which resembled large light boxes. His client was My Beautiful City.
L'Wren Scott set the scene for her LFW debut with a banquet style seating arrangement at # 1 St George Street, where guests ate a meal whilst the models swooshed by on the runway.
Gray added to the glamour and luxury of the experience, lighting the room with an abundance of gelled source four par floorcans, enhancing the beautiful golden architecture & detail.
Making sure the lighting rig didn't distract from the space, the huge front array was designed to integrate into the press riser with 45 variable Source Fours used for backlight. Two single 'stick' towers were also installed out of shot, rigged with ETC Source Fours, and the tables were lit with a textured golden wash of light that helped build the initial atmosphere.
(Jim Evans)
