Pitch & Sync Helps Luxury Luggage Giants Rimowa Celebrate 125 Years

To celebrate 125 years of Rimowa, P&S Studios worked closely with Mazarine to supply the aural treatment, bringing their global celebration of the luxury luggage giants to life. 

The first of the three events at key cities - produced by Mazarine New York and designed by PLAYLAB -  around the globe started in Tokyo’s iconic Harajuku shopping neighbourhood in June, with New York just wrapped recently this month & Shanghai running from mid-December through to January next year. 

Ever wanted to get a glimpse at the suitcase of Billie Eilish? Pharrell? You’re in luck! As well as these personal celeb suitcases, the exhibition is displaying hand-picked travel pieces from Rimowa's impressive archive, including rarely-seen privately-owned cases, collabs with iconic brands, and some special purpose-built pieces.

P&S’ upstart engineer Dereck De Abreu Coelho crafted a sonic atmosphere of a busy international airport to be played during the exhibition as well as a range of voice over announcements in various languages echoing over the mix to direct people around the space.

Keeping things as authentic as ever, Dereck went into the field to record busy spaces - including a certain iconic airport, but the less on that trip the better! - to give the mix a realistic feel using lavalier microphones. 

“I used a set of DPA 4060 Microphones after reading about Chris Watson, a famous nature field recordist who records the sounds for the Attenborough documentaries. These are his microphones of choice when recording atmospheres. I wanted to accurately capture the environments so the experience in the exhibition space felt immersive.

“It’s always great to get into the field and record: it’s a different experience and is infinitely more rewarding than solely using sound libraries. Instead of editing already recorded sounds on the computer, you use your ears to hone in on the atmosphere around you to pick out those bits that capture your attention, with the microphone placement being more a form of editing.

“I’m really pleased with the result as the bespoke recordings I captured allowed us to breathe some life into the immersive soundscape.”