Lightroom

We enter to a room set up like the backstage area of a fashion show. A row of light-up mirrors, and dressing tables littered with makeup, lines the wall. Strips of tape map the floor marking the standing spots for the models: Naomie, Kate, Cindy. ‘Models, be yourself!’ a hand drawn poster tells us before we enter the Lightroom’s main space, a massive box in that has projections on all four walls and the floor. It’s a fun touch, but this is all the physical stuff you get to see at Vogue: Inventing the Runway.  A collaboration between Vogue magazine itself and the Lightroom, the ‘exhibition’ is essentially a 50-minute documentary film, which covers a lot of ground, taking us on a whistlestop tour of fashion’s greatest hits. It’s not entirely clear whether the film is meant to be a history of the clothes, the designers, the runway, or of Vogue and fashion reporting. The non-chronological piece, split into chapters under themes like ‘The Audience’ and ‘Disruptors’, plays on a loop – it’s designed so you can walk in at any moment and the film will still make sense. Covering the first couture house in the 1850s (Charles Frederick Worth), going all the way up to Pharell Williams’s first Louis Vuitton collection in 2023, and Maison Margiela’s Spring Summer ‘24 glazed doughnut models, it makes a lot of ground. All of this is atmospherically narrated by Cate Blanchett’s soft drawl.   If you want to look at massive images beautiful clothing, alongside cinematic music, this is a fun...

Like many a boomer child, Tom Hanks was smitten with the Apollo moon landings; but Tom Hanks being Tom Hanks, he never became unsmitten. The most beloved man in Hollywood has been nurturing a lunar side hustle for some time now: as well as starring in the film ‘Apollo 13’, he’s been involved in lower-key works, producing the HBO miniseries ‘From the Earth to the Moon’ and co-writing the IMAX film ‘Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon 3D’. Staged in Kings Cross’s new, projection-based performance space Lightroom, ‘The Moonwalkers’ is essentially a documentary with bells on, a collaboration between Hanks and the venue, with a script co-written by the actor and Christopher Riley. It is, naturally, narrated by Hanks. Although it makes a point of looking forward to next year’s Artemis mission – the first manned flight to the moon since 1972 – ‘The Moonwalkers’ is a homage to both the Apollo landings and the wonder the Apollo landings instilled in the world.  Starting with JFK’s rousing ‘we choose to go to the Moon, not because it is easy, but because it is hard’ speech, it’s upbeat and America-centric, but well-judged. The main action and most spectacular visuals are projected on the room’s huge front wall, but the side walls cram in smaller details: the female mathematicians – many of them Black – who made the project possible are duly credited, which they certainly weren’t when I was young (or at the time of the landings,for that matter). There’s no contextualising...