For the eighth year, the Austrian crystal house has dressed the Dolby Digital Theatre in Los Angeles for the annual Academy Awards. Working with Tony Award, winning production designer Derek McLane for the third year running, a total of 95,000 Swarovski crystals were used to bring unprecedented sparkle to the event, which was watched by 36.6 million viewers around the globe.
Inspired by the old school Hollywood glamor of movie director and musical choreographer Busby Berkeley’s work, Derek McLane’s production designs included a gigantic crystal closedown wall featuring 22,200 Swarovski crystals. The wall was created by nine artisans who spent 580 hours assembling the 80ft by 40ft frame and the 250lbs of crystal. In addition, Swarovski provided 50,100 crystals for the three separate stage curtains, and a further 23,000 crystals for the theater’s eighteen crystallized opera boxes. Since 2007, over 675,300 Swarovski crystals have been used in the set design for the Academy Awards and more than one million crystals have been incorporated into the costume design.
