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The Y-3 show at The Roseland Ballroom during New York's semi-annual Fashion Week featured designer Yohji Yamamoto's showcase of his sportswear line for Adidas, but sportswear wasn't exactly the main attraction at this stark showcase of what hardly seemed sporty. Instead, guests were treated to an Alfred Hitchcock-inspired environment created by event producers OBO with lighting design by jkld, inc., projection design by Elaine J. McCarthy, staging by KadaN Productions, set design by Mike Brown, rigging by Sapsis Rigging, and technical support from Scharff Weisberg.
With a giant double-hung window, measuring approximately 20'26' and set at an angle to the stage, and a twisted tree on the stage, ominous images, mostly from Hitchcock's The Birds and Psycho, were projected onto the window as models stepped through a crack in the bottom half of the window "glass" onto the runway. Brown's set was based on concepts developed by Villa Eugenie, Adidas' show producers in Germany, who also contracted OBO to stage the show in New York.
"This was not the typical fashion show," says Walter Elzey, senior account executive for Scharff Weisberg, who also provided lighting and video gear for the production. "It was dark and edgy and ominous - very black. Everything was black. Roseland, as a venue, is a little tired, but funky and different, maybe more edgy than some other places. The whole set was black. All the carpeting was black; the seating risers were black. Rather than hundreds of lights, it was more stark pools of light. Even the fashion was dark."
Jan Kroeze, managing member of OBO and president/lighting designer of jkld, describes the show as "strongly atmospheric," with its runway of black glass gravel, a black curtain that opened to reveal the main entrance, and the window with opaque black backing. "Artistically, we were striving to build a single, coherent image with scenery, sound, light, projection, and decor," Kroeze says. "No single element took precedence; they had to integrate holographically."
Integrating lighting and video involved the normal technical issues, according to Kroeze. "Keeping the projection and lighting at the same color temperature was key," he says. "We were projecting video onto black curtains and scenery, and lighting a very gothic atmosphere, but we had to make the video projections...