Fashion show AV is unlike any other event format. There are no speeches, no presentations, no Q and A. The audience sits, music plays, and models walk. For those fifteen or twenty minutes, the sound and the lighting are the entire production.
Get them right and the clothes are the centre of everything, seen in exactly the way the designer intended. Get them wrong and the audience is distracted by a boomy PA or squinting into uneven lighting trying to see the detail on the garments.
This guide covers what AV you need for a fashion show in London, how the runway lighting works, and why the sound brief for a show is different from anything else.
The sound brief for a fashion show
Music is the entire audio content of a fashion show. There are no microphones for speakers. The sound system exists purely to play the soundtrack at the right level, with the right quality, for the duration of the show.
That sounds simpler than a conference. In some ways it is. But it creates its own demands.
Audio quality matters more than volume
A fashion show soundtrack is usually music the designer or their creative team has selected carefully. It sets the tone for the collection. A PA system that colours the sound, that makes the low end boomy or the high end harsh, changes what the music communicates. The system needs to reproduce the track accurately, not loudly.
Professional line array speakers are the right choice for a runway show of any significant size. They deliver even coverage down the length of the runway without hot spots near the speakers or drop-off at the far end. A system with uneven coverage means the audience experience changes depending on where they are sitting. That is not acceptable for a show where the atmosphere is everything.
Cue management
A show with multiple looks and multiple music tracks needs clean transitions between them. A track that fades out at the wrong moment, or a gap between tracks that goes silent, disrupts the flow of the show. The sound engineer needs a detailed cue sheet that matches the running order of the collection, with exact timings and transition instructions for each track.
This cue sheet is built from the creative brief the designer provides. If the music changes between different sections of the collection, that needs to be planned and timed before the run-through. Last-minute track changes on the day are a risk. Lock the playlist as early as possible.
Backstage communication
The person calling the show backstage needs to hear clearly when each look is being sent out. A simple intercom or headset system between the front-of-house position and backstage is standard. It does not need to be complex, but it needs to work reliably so the sound and lighting cues are triggered at the right moment.
Runway lighting
Runway lighting has one primary job: make the clothes look as good as possible under a photographic or visual context.
That is different from stage lighting for a speaker or performer. A speaker needs even, flattering light on their face. Runway lighting needs to render colour accurately, show texture in fabric, and produce a clean, bright picture for photographers positioned at the end of the runway.
WHAT WORKS
Overhead soft wash
Even, diffused light above the runway renders fabric colour accurately and avoids harsh shadows. The workhorse of runway lighting.
WHAT WORKS
Front fill lighting
Low-angle fill light from the front of the house lifts shadows under the chin and on the face without washing out the garments.
USE WITH CARE
Coloured wash
Colour temperature affects how fabric reads. Warm gels change neutral tones. Use only if the designer has signed off on the effect on the specific collection.
FOR FINALES
Dynamic effects
Moving heads, colour shifts, and intensity changes for the finale give the collection’s final moment a different visual energy. Programme these separately from the main runway state.
Colour temperature and fabric
Colour temperature affects how every fabric in the collection reads to the eye and camera. A warm white light makes whites look creamy. A cool white makes colours look more saturated. The designer needs to sign off on the colour temperature before the show, ideally with a sample of key garments tested under the actual rig.
This is the detail that separates a considered fashion show AV brief from a standard one. Most event planners do not think to test lighting against fabric samples. Most designers are very clear that they should.
The photographer position
Press photographers at the end of the runway need the lighting to work for their cameras. Bright, even, front-facing light is what produces clean editorial images. A lighting setup designed purely for the live audience without considering the camera position produces photographs that look dark, flat, or colour-shifted.
If photography is important to the show output, which for most London fashion events it is, the lighting rig needs to be designed with the camera angle in mind. Talk to your AV company about where photographers will be positioned and plan accordingly.
The runway and stage build
The physical runway is usually built as part of the event production, separate from the AV hire but closely connected to it. The height, length, and width of the runway affect the lighting angles and the PA positioning. A lighting rig designed for one runway height will not work the same way if the build changes on the day.
Confirm the exact runway dimensions with the production company or set builder and share those with your AV company before they design the lighting plot. Changes on the day create compromises. Our staging hire page has more on runway and stage formats available.
Backstage and show management
The show needs to be called from somewhere. Usually a show caller backstage gives the models their cues to walk. That caller needs to communicate with the front-of-house AV operator for sound and lighting cues. A simple but reliable communication system between backstage and front-of-house is essential.
Venue access before the show matters. A fashion show lighting rig takes time to focus and test. The run-through needs to happen with models walking at the actual show pace so the engineer can see the lighting in motion and adjust. Half-speed walk-throughs do not show you what the show will look like.
The audience at a fashion show remembers the clothes. But what they actually experienced was sound and light. If those two things were right, the clothes looked exactly as they were meant to.
Live streaming a fashion show
London fashion shows are increasingly streamed live to audiences who cannot attend in person. This changes the AV brief because the cameras now become part of the production, not just documentation.
For a streamed show, camera positions need to be planned so they do not obstruct the live audience. The lighting rig needs to work for the cameras as well as the room. The stream feed needs clean audio from the PA system, not a room microphone. And someone needs to be operating the stream throughout the show.
A streamed fashion show is two productions running simultaneously. It is a bigger brief than a non-streamed show and the AV budget needs to reflect that. Our live streaming AV services page covers what this involves in practice.
Common questions
How loud should the music be at a fashion show?
Loud enough to fill the room and drive the energy of the show, but not so loud that guests cannot speak during the walk. The level is set during a sound check and adjusted once the audience is in. Your sound engineer manages this. It is not a fixed setting.
Do you need a lighting programmer for a fashion show?
For anything beyond basic fixed lighting, yes. A show with cued changes between looks, or lighting that shifts for a finale, needs a lighting desk and someone operating it live. Pre-set static lighting does not give you the control to respond to what is happening on the runway.
What happens if the music cues do not match the models on the runway?
This comes from not rehearsing the show properly. The cue sheet needs to be locked before the run-through and the engineer needs to know when each track starts and what triggers the next one. A run-through with models walking at the actual show pace resolves most timing issues before the show goes live.
