Beyonce's LED dress needed its own rehearsals
Beyonce's LED dress needed "extensive rehearsals" to ensure it worked in the right way for her 'Cowboy Carter Tour' performances.
Beyonce's LED dress needed "extensive rehearsals" to ensure it worked for her 'Cowboy Carter Tour' performances.
The 43-year-old singer kicked off her latest concert series in Los Angeles earlier this week and to sing 'Daughter', she wore a garment created by Anrealage designer Kunihiko Morinaga, which featured around 35,000 full-colour LEDs that transform continously.
The designer collaborated with Mplusplus, a design firm that integrates LEDs into fabrics and also developed a wireless control system for the garment, and it took time to get the lights just right.
Kunihiko told WWD via email: “After accepting the offer [to design the dress] I, along with my team, traveled back and forth between Japan and Los Angeles to design and produce an original outfit. The result was a crinoline dress made with our signature ‘Led Textile,’ a flexible fabric capable of displaying shifting colors, patterns and graphics like a liquid crystal screen.
“To ensure visibility in a stadium setting, we enlarged the graphic elements of the LED design and made fine adjustments to brightness levels up until the final stages.
"Because synchronisation between the dress lighting and the stage lighting was crucial, we conducted extensive rehearsals to perfect the interplay between them.
"Our team controlled the visuals in real time from offstage, syncing the design with the music as the performance unfolded."
Kunihiko - who presented a similar high-tech gown during Paris Fashion Week last month - thinks his creation "transcended fashion" from the minute Beyonce wore it.
He said: "At Paris Fashion Week, what we presented was a glimpse into the near future — but the moment Beyoncé wore it, it became the present. In that instant, it transcended fashion and became part of culture and history.
"Creating a one-of-a-kind garment that exists nowhere else in the world — that, to me, is the essence of fashion design. Beyoncé always reminds us of the true power of creation."
On stage, the dress starts in a tartan pattern before transitioning into a half-blue motif, then crimson sequins, black lace motif, and fazzling gold sequens before shifting again to create a "truly epic" moment.
The designer said: “It eventually shifts into tricolour noise, evoking the American flag — red, white and blue — which then dissolves into monochrome noise.
"From there, stained glass motifs reminiscent of a cathedral appear and evolve rapidly, culminating in an explosion of light like bursting stars. Finally, the imagery fades into cosmic darkness, and light rains down once more as the dress reaches its climactic glow.
“It was a truly epic visual performance.”
