An Interview with Dan Shipton: THAT Ellie Goulding dress.
If you watched the 2014 Royal Variety, you would've seen Ellie Goulding's captivating performance. Combining a 600ft white dress with a choreograph of projectors created this most talked about spectacle. This dress inspired me to look at combining technology and fashion, as it has endless possibilities and a great viwer impact. So I picked art director, Dan Shipton's thoughts on the dress; how he came up with the idea and how he went about creating it.
What inspired you to create this particular concept? And where there any difficulties in taking the idea from concept to product?
To create the idea I worked with a visual artist called Frieder Weiss who has developed a technology which use infrared to allow live movement on stage to realtime interact with projection and screen content. He’s an inspiring guy that I wanted to work with.
I was approached by Polydor (Ellie’s label) to create the performance and we began talking about dress projection. I felt that if we were going to do it we needed to take the idea to the next level and it felt like Frieder could be a great part of this. The criteria I faced was:
Wow the audience.
Make something unseen before.
Have no performers on stage other than Ellie with her as the focus.
Create a garment that could provide a big enough surface area for the projection to work on.
Create a garment that could provide the dynamic movement that Frieder’s system needs to show it off.
Fit our system and idea within the constraints of a show where we are one of many performers.
Make it work within a tight rehearsal schedule.
Luckily we managed to make it work and it turned out ok!
If there was the right technology available, would you use it?
I’m always after new technology but it is difficult with costume and LED. I am working on another secret project at the moment where we are integrating the two and the key for me is to not turn the garment into something that feels too space age and looses the fluidity of natural fabric. So often LED garments are based around hard structure and become almost like armour which I hate (unless it works for the subject). We’ve managed this on this one but I can’t talk about it until the end of May…
So that's that guys! Keep your eyes peeled for more breath-taking work by Dan Shipton.
