HOT LIGHTS

Four unforgettable ADB productions.

VICTORIA’S SECRET 2005 Dolls gone wild. Amid gigantic inflated teddy bears, alphabet blocks and Christmas tree ornaments, the Angels entered the runway from a gift box as if they were animated dolls in a child’s nursery, only to assume human proportions as they strutted the runway— a provocative blurring of babes and babies.

CHRISTIAN DIOR COUTURE FALL 2012: FLORAL FANTASIA,

PART ONE Raf Simons’s debut at Dior will be remembered as much for the salon walls panelled in blooms as for his deftly reconceived classics. In collaboration with florists Mark Colle and Eric Chauvin, Bureau Betak spent weeks constructing irrigation and drainage systems within steel structures filled with waterabsorbing foam so that the roughly one million orchids, mimosas and delphiniums would stay fresh.

HUSSEIN CHALAYAN FALL 2007 Catwalk cyclone. Thanks to a fan, dry ice and hazy lighting, a manmade tornado appeared to shoot up from a hole in a rounded platform at the end of the runway. The wind highlighted the volume of the models’ dresses like a Marilyn Monroe moment amplified to the extreme.

CHRISTIAN DIOR SPRING 2016: FLORAL

FANTASIA, PART TWO Within the Louvre’s majestic Cour Carrée, Bureau Betak transformed the facade of the custom-made venue into a purplish-blue mountain planted with some 350,000 delphinium stems. Inside, the spotlights were rigged on telescopic arms and clustered like blossoms. Post-show, the public was encouraged to pick away at the 18-metre-high creation.