Image Credit : Photography - Thomas Adank
Project Overview
A spectacular scheme for ‘Gabrielle Chanel. Fashion Manifesto’ at the V&A in South Kensington - the first ever UK exhibition dedicated to the work of French couturière Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel. The temporary show, held in the 1100 sq m Sainsbury Gallery - one of the largest temporary exhibition spaces in the UK - charts the establishment of the House of CHANEL and the evolution of Chanel’s iconic design style, which continues to influence how women dress today.
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
Creative Director StudioZNA - Zerlina Hughes
Senior Lighting Designer Studio ZNA - Saumya Monga
Interior Designer - Storey Studio
V&A Exhibition Curator - Oriole Cullen
V&A Exhibition Project Curators - Connie Karol Burks & Stephanie Wood, the entire extended V&A exhibitions team Graphic Design - The Bon Ton
AV Software Production - Luke Halls
Sound Design - Coda to Coda
Contractor - Setworks
AV Hardware - Blue Elephant
Graphics Production: Omni Graphics
Technical Project Management and Quantity Surveyor: Focus Consultants
Project Brief
To create the lighting design scheme for the display of more than 200 looks by the French couturière - marking the first time they have all been exhibited together – alongside jewellery, accessories, cosmetics and fragrance. The installation also features rarely-seen pieces from the V&A's collection - alongside archive pieces from Chanel's heritage collections – including clothing worn by Hollywood stars Lauren Bacall and Marlene Dietrich.
We worked closely with exhibition designer Storey Studio and blended seamlessly with their approach, which sought to create a feeling of purity in line and proportion and a sense of timeless elegance. Ten individual roomsets transport visitors to places Chanel frequented and lived, from the La Pausa villa on the Côte d’Azur to the iconic staircase at Rue Cambon, the location of Chanel’s boutique and haute couture salons, as well as her apartment.
Project Innovation/Need
The exhibition deals with many aspects of Chanel’s life, from the glamorous to the controversial. Studio ZNA used lighting to ensure all parts of the story are told in the most thoughtfully created environments possible. The journey takes the visitors through bright, open daytime vistas to smaller and more intimate, high-contrast spaces to create an emotionally engaging narrative.
The ten themed sections spatially explore Chanel's innovative approach to fabric, silhouette, and construction. Plenty of well-known pieces are on display, from the famous little black dress (LBD), the 2.55 handbag, and the much-loved tweed suit to two-tone slingback heels and Chanel's iconic debut perfume, N°5.
Key feature lighting areas include the rotating, golden light in The Perfume Room, which has its own structure within the exhibition space, intended to evoke sunlight passing through the Chanel no. 5 perfume bottle. A bespoke abstracted chandelier was designed for the re-created Rue Cambon staircase in the finale. Dynamic light pans the staircase, matching the tempo of a film, projected onto the panels above the stairs, featuring archive footage of Chanel herself.
Lighting created an eye-catching vista for the double-height tweed suit vitrines. The showcases are lined with lit panels in the tops diffused with a soft white fabric to create bright vignettes; this is complemented by a concealed uplight to pick up the finer details. The lighting created a breath-taking luminosity while letting the garments be the main stars of the space.
Design Challenge
The lighting design in this project was key to allowing visitors to appreciate the exquisite details, forms, textures, and materiality of the objects on display at close quarters. This had to be achieved while using low conservation light levels, and the lighting design also needed to create wider luminous and elegantly layered lightscapes within the exhibition world.
Inspired by Storey Studio’s approach, Studio ZNA proposed visitors should experience the objects under subtly shifting lighting qualities, moving through the sections from morning, noon, afternoon and dusk to night-time, in exterior and interior, rural and urban contexts. This treatment was sometimes abstracted - in the entrance sequences, for example, with a fresh, crisp morning light, or in The Perfume Room, where Studio ZNA created the effect of beams of light passing through a gold liquid perfume bottle.
In the evening wear section, we complemented the dusk-time projections of moving trees with dynamic gobos projected onto the floor timed to the sequence of the projections. Every lighting decision also had to ensure that the objects were lit so as to be the central focal point of visitors’ attention.
Sustainability
All the light fixtures specified are LED, and a large number of these feature dynamic white controls to ensure flexible future re-use by the museum for other exhibitions. Studio ZNA always champions first using fixtures and equipment available in the museum stock to reduce waste and promote reuse, working with ZNA technicians and partners to upgrade existing stock light fixtures with high-colour-rendering LED chips.
Any fixtures purchased specially for the show are supplied by UK-based manufacturers. Detailed records of these are kept, and de-install guidelines are provided to ensure they can be easily reused in the next exhibitions.
Lighting is also designed to ensure accessibility and glare-free viewing for all of the museum's many diverse visitors, including wheelchair users. This was done by creating returns, niches and headers to conceal fixtures from direct view, among other strategies.
Lighting Design
This award celebrates creative and innovative lighting design or effects in indoor or outdoor spaces.
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