It’s hardly unusual to move fashion models to an exotic locale for a runway show or photo shoot. Bringing a rare environment to them is harder to tug off — but that’s precisely what Pier59 Studios has in mind with its latest innovation, a digital MegaWall designed for virtual promoting production and events.

The studio will take the wraps off the technology on Wednesday night during its party at Pier59’s Chelsea Piers location, as Latest York Fashion Week gets underway.

While the tech will probably be the featured attraction, it’s not the one thing the corporate will probably be celebrating. The party itself represents a return to festive form for the studio, which was known for holding bashes every five years or so. COVID-19 derailed the last one, forcing it to skip over its own twenty fifth anniversary. But at the very least now it may well enjoy its longevity and innovation without delay.

“We now have been in business now for 27 years, very successfully…and we’re combining it with virtual production,” Federico Pignatelli, founder and president of Pier59 Studios, told WWD. “Virtual production has been used previously few years, increasingly more within the feature film industry. Within the promoting industry, it’s just beginning to occur.

“We built the biggest LED wall on the earth for promoting.”

The MegaWall is able to digital environments depicting every little thing from a distant mountain village to the surface of the moon. In that way, it’s spiritual kin to virtual reality, even though it differs in a couple of notable ways. As a big, physical LED wall, there aren’t any goggles mandatory. The sphere of view can be distinct. VR boasts a 360-degree virtual view, while the MegaWall is available in at just below 180 degrees. But at 65 feet in circumference, 67 feet in diameter and a height of 20 feet, it continues to be impressively immersive.

Much of that comes all the way down to the tech behind the scenes, in accordance with Steve Baum, project lead consultant for virtual production.

“Together with the screen is a set of technologies that allow us to trace the camera in virtual space. The entire idea is to capture what we call in ‘camera-visual effects,’ [which] is admittedly what is going on here,” he said, explaining that this scenario replaces, even improves on, green screen technology.

As a substitute of actors reacting to imaginary settings or items, and computer graphics being dropped in after the shoot during postproduction, Pier59 can arrange a virtual production that displays those elements in real time.

“We use the virtual production technology and computational ability of our stage to render all of that information, each the live motion and the virtual elements together, to mix them within the camera live,” said Baum. “Principally supporting all of this can be a set of computers which might be able to delivering over 2 trillion calculations per second to administer all of this geometric and visual data. It’s an incredibly powerful system of computational tools and software that makes all of it work.”

Baum considers it the closest thing to a real-life “Star Trek” holodeck.

Brands will have the ability to carry a “magic hour” shoot all day long, or go from a winter tundra to a desert vista. The use cases are varied as well. MegaWall was built for production, but it may well also serve up a rare setting for live events, like runway shows.

When it comes to “technological transition, we went from the film, traditional film photography, to digital photography, to then digital motion and now to virtual,” continued Pignatelli. “The virtual world is what we’re going to live in, in our future. But the long run starts now, and that is precisely what we’re bringing to Pier59 Studios.”

His guests will probably be the primary to experience his version of it. The roster of attendees confirmed for the event ranges from Mayor Eric Adams to models Candice Swanepoel, Lais Ribeiro, Taylor Hill, Josephine Skriver, Amy Lefévre and Johannes Huebl, in addition to fashionista, drag queen and Latest York’s ambassador of glam CT Hedden, with others from the style and business world expected. Pignatelli originally estimated 600 to 700 attendees, but upward of 1,200 people have requested invitations, hoping to ascertain out the studio’s magic wall.

The list befits a business that after counted Santo Versace (brother of Gianni), Italian publishing giant Mondadori and fashion photographer Marco Glaviano as Pignatelli’s partners. After 9/11, the previous finance executive bought them out and have become sole owner.

Taking stock of his 27 years running a photograph and video studio, he reflected on the changes he has seen in the style sector. Naturally, that spans shifts in tastes and trends. But in addition technology.

“Fashion is embracing, quite rapidly, all these innovations. We will see it in the style shows — they wish to be not only creative, but to interrupt the principles,” Pignatelli said. “Technology is unquestionably something that the style business desires to embrace, and has to embrace. Fashion is a multitrillion-dollar business worldwide, and the economics are huge, in order that they should be certain that that they will reach the general public and be competitive.

“Because today, the general public is connected to the digital world, and it’s going to be connected to the virtual world increasingly more.”