Eindhoven, Netherlands – Royal Philips Electronics (AEX: PHI, NYSE: PHG) organized Thursday October 9th the second Illuminesca event in its history in Amsterdam. Illuminesca showcased lighting innovations of Philips for fashion and retail at the trendy Westergasfabriek venue. The Westergasfabriek was packed with international guests originating form different corners: fashion, design and retail, and they witnessed an experience where ‘Lighting met Fashion’.

Rising stars in international fashion design Iris van Herpen, Mada van Gaans from the Netherlands and Nikoline Liv Andersen (Denmark) teamed up with upcoming lighting designers Mafalda Rangel (Portugal), Liviana Sudito (Romania) and Tatjana Zamyatina (Russia) to form creative combinations between fashion and lighting. Coached by Belgian lighting designer Koert Vermeulen of ACT Lighting Design, they used Philips MASTERColour CDM Elite, LED systems and AmbiScene flexible lighting solutions to create ultimate fashion presentations and dynamic colour changing effects. Prior to the revelation of these unique experiments, the three fashion designers showed their collections via an exciting catwalk show. Bombastic sounds, lively light and video effects complemented the models wearing thrilling designs.

The world-renowned trend forecaster Li Edelkoort opened the evening with a speech on lifestyle trends in interior design. She invited the audience to be ‘more unusual’ in their design and appearance and spoke even of interior landscaping instead of interior design. Next to future forms and looks of materials and objects, she particularly spoke of the importance of lighting in design. “Light becomes a building stone, a part of architecture,” Edelkoort said in her inspiring speech.

Corne Voermans of segment marketing management retail lighting with Philips summarized Illuminesca as impressive and inspiring: “The evening was very exciting for everybody. The excellent creative work by the lighting and fashion designers showed the added value of good lighting for fashion presentations in shops to all our guests; from designers and architects to retail managers.”