Ace Event, a major event staging company based in South West of France, was recently called on by lingerie brand Allande to technically manage their annual fashion show in Biarritz.
Every year, the French lingerie brand organises its official fashion show and Ace Event has been responsible for the technical aspect of the show for eight years. The lucky few attending the show were not only dazzled by the new collection, but also by the production delivered by Ace Event around the 60m long catwalk, with a full light, sound and video show.
Over one hundred lighting fixtures were installed to highlight the venue and the new 2017 collection. Guess were treated to live and recorded content projected on six screens, while complex video mapping animated the back of the stage. It took three days for the Ace Event technical team to transform the Espace Bellevue into a beautiful fashion world.
To beat the pace of the stiletto heels on stage, Ace Event had to fit the venue with a sound system sufficiently powerful to cater for 600 people. The event stager, who is working with six different loudspeaker brands in its portfolio, opted for the APG sound in order to overcome the complexity of the project and the various sonic challenges.
“In a fashion show, the technical side should be as discreet as possible, so that all the attention is directed towards the models and the designs they are wearing,” explains Ace Event sound engineer Pierre Arrangoïs. “Knowing that we had to work with a 60m long catwalk, we decided to deploy a multicast system with APG coaxial speakers, to ensure an evenly spread out sound right across the room, which we split into three distinct areas.”
The first area, where the models stopped for a few seconds in front of the audience, was handled by DX15 and DX12 loudspeakers hung on each side of the catwalk. These compact coaxial speakers are acoustically complementary and provide a discreet yet powerful and detailed sound.
In the second area, two DX15 per side where installed, while the third area was fitted with two sets of three DX12 speakers. At the catwalk entrance, an ultra-compact multipurpose APG DX8 speaker coupled with TB218S subwoofers reinforced the sound system, giving it both power and reception-level clarity.
Finally, low frequency sound coverage was handled by three groups of two APG UL115B dedicated bass speakers, from the successful and workhorse Uniline range. The entire sound system was managed by Powersoft K2 and K3 amplifiers and APG digital processors.
“For complex projects such as this one, the versatility and level of performance of the APG gear gives us much needed flexibility,” concludes Arrangoïs. “This allows us to sonically cover venues using fewer speakers, while meeting the end user requirements in terms of quality and cost.”
