A team of carpet fitters from Bourne fought against the clock to carpet a runway for a fashion show.
Staff at the Lambourn carpet company in Bourne were asked to fit a giant violet carpet by fashion designer Christopher Kane for his show at London Fashion Week. Master fitter Matthew Blackbourn admitted that he had never heard of the designer, nor fitted carpets for a fashion show before. After a quick investigation the company realised that thy had very little margin for error.
The catwalk, that filled the third floor at the One New Change Shopping Centre in London, wasn’t the largest carpet the business had laid but it was the most logistically challenging. Matthew, his brother Johnny and their father Brian installed 1,800 square metres of felt-back carpet on a runway 75 metres long and 10 metres wide. They also had to fit 43 metre long carpets on the setting side of the runway. They couldn’t mark the floor of seating so they had to lay floor protection before they could start.
Lambourn Carpets sent an eight man crew to fit the carpets within 24 hours. They arrived at the venue at 5am on the Sunday and left at 5am the following Monday. They had breaks every few hours but were able to finally finish on time. Although they were very tired, the team was glad to be involved and the job gave them a lot of satisfaction to see what they had achieved. They were invited to the show but were too tired to attend. After the 20 minute show had finished they returned and removed the carpets within the hour.