Martin LED in Style at Rock & Republic Fashion Show

Rock & Republic is an American fashion brand featuring a couture line of clothing and accessories that includes high-end denim and handbags. Among the pinnacle of designer fashion, the progressive brand holds several fashion presentations each year, including fashion week in New York and L.A. to introduce their upcoming lines.

The Spring 2008 collection was modeled on Feb. 2nd in New York City. Lighting designer for the fashion show was Scott Chmielewski of Digital Media Designs who worked closely to implement the designs and concepts of the show’s producer and production designer Matt Stoelt of Stoelt Productions.

Pushing the envelope
“Rock & Republic is one of the most progressive fashion labels out there,” Scott states. “They are continually trying to push the technological envelope and aren’t afraid to use the latest cutting edge equipment. Rock & Republic events are always rock n’ roll and technology infused and for this show they asked me to make the ‘eyes bleed’ of the attendees. I proposed that we use the Martin Stagebar 54™ and Martin LC Series™ LED panels along with [other automateds and conventionals]. It was a 22 minute visual assault to match a cutting edge line of clothing.

LC columns, Stagebar trim
“We placed a column of Martin LC Series LED panels at both the entrance and exit points of the U shaped runway and lined the columns to a matching height with Stagebar 54s.” Martin’s compact yet high powered LED luminaire functions as either a pixel bar for displaying imagery or as a wash luminaire for floodlighting surfaces.

Stagebar 54
“I had used Stagebars in small numbers on a TV production and immediately fell in love with them for their brightness, saturated colors, rich color mixing and severe ease of use,” Scott comments. “They stood out on camera, even over the moving light fixtures, and had a huge presence on camera and to the eye.”

The Stagebars and LC panels worked well together on the Rock & Republic show, Scott said, and he had no problems with coordinating color shades between the fixtures. “It was completely uniform as far as intensity levels and color matching,” he said.

The theme of the Rock & Republic fashion show was "noir" (black) and designer Michael Ball asked for only red, white and black color throughout the entire presentation. “That led exceptionally well to the white LED feature of the Stagebars,” Scott says. “The different color temperature and the ability to add white to RGB was an added benefit. The color temperature of the white made it stand out above any other fixture that we had on the rig.” With five colored diodes (Red, Green, Blue, Amber and White) instead of the usual three, the Stagebar offers a broader range of colors.

Problem solver
Scott says that another reason they chose the Stagebars was for their exceptional ease of use. “The Stagebars solved typical challenges you have with using this many LEDs,” he says. “The auto-addressing feature was very useful and the ability to copy and paste DMX settings was especially helpful because once the fixtures were up 12-15 feet in the air they were generally inaccessible. The entire system was well thought out for ease of installation and programming. In my opinion, it is by far the most cutting edge LED fixture on the market.”

Scott concludes with a word of praise for lighting supplier Main Light Industries of Delaware, “As always, Main Light helps me stay on the cutting edge of design by staying on the cutting edge of technology with their inventory and support.”

Producer, Production Designer: Stoelt Productions
Lighting Designer, Lighting Programmer: Scott Chmielewski (Digital Media Designs)
Gaffers: Nick John, Gerard McCarthy

Lighting Equipment:
10 x Martin LC Series
48 x Martin Stagebar 54