When the Sun Goes Down, We See

The idea

For this runway I was really interested in the relationship between the audience and the models. I'd seen other shows where models step out from the crowd to do their walk, but since we were throwing a party on top of a show, I wanted to figure out what it meant to "party" for NYFW. What does it mean to celebrate the things we wear, and why do we do it? The only answer I could really come up with was that we aren't celebrating the clothes at all. We're celebrating ourselves. After that, I knew what I needed to do.

Guests would come into the space like it was just a warehouse party: low lights, a DJ blaring techno, an open floor, cheap drinks. Once the room filled up, a set of lights on the floor would turn on and outline a runway. The music would change, and models would step out of the crowd, do their walk and go back in. When the last model walked, the runway lights would turn off again and the last two models would pull the crowd back in to dance.

The challenge

• Making runway lights nobody would notice before they turned on.
• Running 50 looks and hiding all of them in the crowd.
• Getting models to their places without anyone noticing.
• Getting the audience to go back to dancing afterwards.

What we did

We used outdoor flat LED strips to shape the runway, held down with clear wrap and spike tape that matched the floor. Pretty early on it was clear the room lights had to be low enough to hide the floor lights and the models standing around in the crowd.

We split the 50 models into two groups. I ran a rehearsal where two models stepped onto the runway at once and walked the loop before stepping back into the crowd. Calling the show took a stage manager and two stagehands, sending everyone out at the right time.

The ending

It mattered that the audience got back into it once the runway turned off, so we had the last two models grab audience members by the hand, pull them onto the runway and start dancing.