Set Pieces: We speak to the designers turning catwalk shows into pure spectacle

Sitting at Simon Costin’s kitchen table, I am intensely aware that I’m not alone. Opposite me, the head and shoulders of a male mannequin gaze blankly out, flanked by butterflies arranged in ornate compositions inside enormous glass domes. Beside them, animated-looking puppets slump drunkenly against one another on the shelves, and upstairs a giant Humpty Dumpty egg is perched opulently on a chaise longue. It’s a macabre yet joyful collection of curiosities I’m keeping company with. But I should have expected nothing less from the relics of more than 20 years realising the grand fantasies of fashion’s most visionary minds. To say that Simon is heavily immersed in fantasy would be an understatemet. He designed sets for Alexander McQueen’s fashion shows for seven years before going on to create landscapes for Givenchy, Lanvin and the like. “The fashion industry thrives on fantasy, that’s its bottom line! It’s what it grows out of,” he tells me. “It allows people a moment to become something else. It convinces people they need things that they don’t; that these things will make their lives better. It gives windows into worlds that are totally impossible and can never exist.” It’s no wonder that Simon, with his innate hankering for the magical, the ethereal and the strange, ended up doing what he does, constructing the extraordinary daydreams of designers, and creating the landscapes which underpin many of Tim Walker’s iconic photographs. It was purely by chance that he came to work in the fashion industry. “A student wrote to me from Central Saint Martins asking if I was still doing the body sculpture jewellery pieces,” he says, referring to the elaborate and sinister work he made while studying theatre design at Wimbledon. “I said ‘No, not really, but I’ve got some I can loan for your degree show.’ And that was Lee, who became known as Alexander McQueen.” It was a serendipitous match for the like-minded creatives. “All of a sudden I’m doing these massive great fashion shows, which wasn’t by design at all. Would I have pursued it had Lee not written to me? I don’t know really, probably not.” Simon went on to create a number of highly conceptual sets for the designer over the following seven years, including the eminent Untitled show of Spring 1998 (originally called The Golden Shower until the name was changed due to a sponsor’s objection). It was very much a collaborative partnership with Simon often helping to realise the designer’s abstract ideas. “With the Untitled show Lee knew he wanted it to rain, but didn’t know the context or how that would work. So I suggested these tanks that were filled with water as the audience came in. The collection seemed to be predominantly black in the first half and white in the second , so we devised this kind of yin yang context. The catwalk was white for the first half with a black collection, and then there was a seven minute gap when there were no models on the catwalk at all while the tanks filled up with black ink in front of everyone. Because it was lit from underneath the ink obscured the light, so the catwalk was in effect black, and then the second half came out, with the light.” The show received critical acclaim for its dark playfulness; models dancing across the catwalk in the golden rain wearing McQueen’s sinister creations. “They were quite conceptual pieces, they weren’t just making it look decorative. I don’t do that very well.” Despite the incredible scale of his ideas, Simon is clear on the most important aspect of being a set designer in the fashion industry. “You can never forget what it is that you’re there to do, which is to show the collection,” he explains. “Often the designer has had inspirations that aren’t apparent in the clothes, so you can play that out in the scenography. It’s all about adding layers of meaning.” This golden rule is echoed by Stefan Beckman, the New York-based designer responsible for creating notoriously extravagant fashion shows, including sets for Marc Jacobs’ shows every season since 2006. “Honestly, it’s about the clothes, first and foremost,” he tells me. “You’re there to do a creative job, but in the end you need to be true to the house and true to the spirit of the designer.” In Stefan’s case, this notion might have something to do with his long term collaboration with Jacobs. Last season for the Autumn Winter 2014 show he designed 500 cloud-shaped pillows, which were suspended by cables from the ceiling to hang eight feet above the floor. The result was a dreamily melancholic atmosphere which reflected the serene, pastel-dominated collection paraded below. The reality of building such an environment, Stefan assures me, is slightly more complicated than it might appear. “It was a challenge trying to make it work, hanging all those clouds from the ceiling for Marc last season. That was definitely a hindrance for the lighting.” Deadlines are among the most impressive elements of Stefan’s work. “You’re under incredible t