Lebanese designer Rabih Kayrouz marches to his own drum. For his featherlight fall-winter 2011 haute couture display Wednesday in Paris, he sent out models in pleated silk tankdresses whom, instead of careening down the runway in vertiginous heels ambled barefoot over a catwalk covered in real grass.
The audience of fashion editors, stylists and journalists — baking under the summer sun in courtyard — eyed Kayrouz’s fan-pleated silk dresses and airy, wide-legged trousers with undisguised envy. A knit tankdress in chartreuse and a shirtdress in bold teal looked particularly appealing to the melting crowd of fashion insiders.
Little green feathers, like a nascent layer of moss, emerged from the creases of the pleats that covered a putty-colored silk dress. Belts in gold metal gave a hard edge to the gauzy knits and silks.
While other designers sent out more season-appropriate looks in leather with a sprinkling of fur, Kayrouz explained he was seeking a middle route between couture — ultra-exclusive looks made-to-measure for a handful of fabulously wealthy women — and the off-the-rack designs most of us morals are condemned to wearing.
"Haute couture as we know it is almost something passe," he told The Associated Press. "There’s no time for that. Now clients are very demanding and they want those well-designed, well-cut pieces in great materials, but they want them off the rack."
"We want to take the savoir faire of France’s haute couture ateliers and give it the rigor and the pace of high-end ready-to-wear," he said.
