The New York Times: A Fashion Show on the Empire State Building
On a typical New York night, you can see the Empire State Building lit up in color to honor a special occasion — green for Earth Day, for example, or red and blue for a Chicago Cubs World Series victory. But the building will look decidedly more extravagant on Wednesday, when Harper’s Bazaar will project 150 cover images — including of Audrey Hepburn, Reese Witherspoon and Gwyneth Paltrow — onto the building’s north facade to celebrate the magazine’s 150th anniversary.
The images were chosen from across the magazine’s history: There will be works from Andy Warhol and Richard Avedon, and images of Lauren Bacall and Kate Moss. The projections will be 500 feet tall and 186 feet wide and cover 42 floors of the building; they will run intermittently from 8:30 p.m. to midnight.
“What I really want is to allow New Yorkers to enjoy the greatest fashion show in the world,” Glenda Bailey, editor in chief of Harper’s Bazaar, said in an interview. “It will be the greatest light show that has ever been.”
The Empire State Building installed an LED lighting system that could generate 16 million colors in 2012, and has since hosted a few of these high-definition projects, including photos of endangered wildlife and artwork from the Whitney Museum.