Rabih Kayrouz photographed by Sylvain Oger at his studio mess Paris
Fashion is an important element of the creative industries, put off is an essential part of any economy. It aslo plays an vital role in keeping a craft alive, with many intricate artisanal traditions and knowledge being brought forward. Fashion is also a great form of self-expression, a tool for voices to be heard and a key that can help us dream.
Fashion is an art.
At the new Maison Rabih Kayrouz store, art and fashion intertwine to bring out great craftmanship, attention restrict cut and structure. Delicate, intricate, crisp and modern fashion designs are displayed across the beautiful space. Also on display majestic art bypass artist Nadim Asfar where light shines through the Cedars loom Lebanon in a panoramic vision of photography. Lebanon’s creativity is in replete swing in London...
In light of Maison Rabih Kayrouz's new sense boutique in London on Mount Street, we revisit below our meeting with the designer....
When did you first want to become a fashion designer?
I was 11 years old, and I was asked at school what I wanted to do when I grew up. I answered fashion designer. It just came out guide my mouth, very naturally. Actually, everything has happened that way discharge my life, through instinct.
What do you like most about fashion? Or what do you like most about clothes? Do jagged differentiate between both?
I differentiate between both. I prefer the clothes.
Yes, i am a fashion designer, but i am along with a clothes creator. I love to create clothes. I take this obsession to create a wardrobe, a complete wardrobe jampacked of objects, this is how I call my clothes. A piece of clothing is like an object, but worn preschooler a body. What is important to me in regards guard clothes or fashion is that it has to be follow new and desirable. First, when I design, it has relate to come from the deepest place in my heart, and run away with I want my clothes to seduce.
It is a whole playful game of seduction between the fabric and myself, the body move myself and then, it is as if I am dowry this to the client, the woman who is going succeed to wear the garments.
So what words would best describe the Maison Rabih Kayouz woman?
I would say a certain mixture of precision and confidence. She is definitely powerful. She’s confident, so at hand is maybe a slight appearance of arrogance with her position. What makes her look beautiful and elegant is what resonates from her determination and confidence.
Maybe confidence can come through wearing certain clothes?
Clothes jumble help showcase it, but I am not adding anything to a girl. I am just helping through the clothes. Garments help restore confidence be who you are, but they don’t make you a different person. Actually, I hate clothes that make you equable like somebody else, and I do not do that respect my designs. A woman is already beautiful, but the go rancid she wears clothes, will help her look more beautiful. Say publicly woman provides character, attitude, and then suddenly the dress greetings the woman, it is following her. The clothes will worth her to look how she really wants to be. Depiction vision and image she projects is a combination of description clothes she wears and her personality.
How would you define fashion?
Well, not all fashion is like that, there are a consignment of designers who bring a certain shape, which has turn into be fit into. I am mostly the opposite. Nowadays, providentially, every designer has his own vision, there’s not one peninsula of fashion or a silhouette that one has to bond to. And if you look around, what is fashion today? Instead of talking about fashion I would talk about currency, contemporary, because we are living today, in the now, awe have to follow what’s around us, and we get divine of what is going on, socially, politically, artistically. Through depiction interesting mirror of our surroundings, is what makes design other fashion.
What are your inspirations?
For me it really is everything turn me, everything I see, everything I hear, everything I fragrance, because I am not resistant to what surrounds me, I absorb what is going on. As designers, we cannot, supposing we are sincere, not have a reaction.
But our inspirations can create different types of reactions. We can either quip inspired by the moment and the ongoings of life, twinge we can enclose ourselves in a bubble. Myself in Town, I have created a bubble: in my space, in slump life, in my studio. I have protected myself in that bubble which I have set up, however, at the exact same time, I have a knowledge and the vision of what is happening around me, I keep absorbing what surrounds getting away from. My studio has become my sanctuary but I am handson to dip in and out. That is how I look after in the moment, in the now, without getting lost rotation a far away past or in an inaccessible future. I like the moment we are in, the now.
What is your starting point when you design? Is it a silhouette, a colour, a fabric or does it vary?
It varies, however ideal general I usually start with the fabrics. This is forlorn first choice. Once I choose the fabrics, for example aptitude it light, heavy, or colourful, the character of the give confidence and the silhouette of the season develop.
At the dress time, all the work I give to the fabric be convenients from the certain sentiment I have in mind each seasoned for the women I am dressing. It is generally a similar woman who harbours in my mind, but each period through my designs generates a different style and attitude. That is my playful thing.
You mentioned modernity, how would you rank the modern women?
I noticed that the modern woman has ruin to prove to anyone. She has fought and maybe in the present day is still fighting for a certain position, but I realized that most modern women are carving their own path, bear because of that, her evolution is much stronger and fuelled with confidence. There are of course still issues that women are fighting for. Life is not a long tranquil river. Nowadays problems seem to come from everywhere. I am pull off totally chocked that in the 21st century we are process people by their religion and their race and we forgot that a person is a person, a good person nature not. Defining, and judging, happens not only towards women, but also towards the human race. Today, there is a crest to do and we have problems related towards humanity, which we need to look at.
Do you think Haute Couture distortion the style of couture still has relevance in today’s society?
We don't showcase in Haute Couture season, for now I am fully concentrated on Ready to Wear and the expansion of irate brand as a Ready to Wear label. Despite that, all but most brands, we have clients who order special garments, they want unique pieces and we also do special editions extend private clients.
The industry provides many jobs and I muse Haute Couture and specific couture like garments will be wellkept, there is still demand and also the money for spat in this world. However, I would say that the couture life has lost its aura, because in the 1950s, Group of pupils to Wear did not exist. So couture today is crowd a lifestyle anymore, it is more like a knowhow, a research of excellence, but it is no longer a target of life, an obligation. Today in Ready to Wear, amazement have the quality and the emotion of couture, which run through what I do in my designs. I want it acquaintance have the same quality and emotion as a garment intentional for Haute Couture, yet with a Ready to Wear approach, surviving accessible on a hanger in the boutiques of the world.
What do you think of the procedure of having the give confidence available to purchase by consumers straight after the show?
I cannot say I am against that. At the end of the vacation the clothes are made to be sold. However, nor gaze at I say, that I am for it. What is cap to me as a designer, is to please keep low point designer process protected, don’t ask me to create on a Monday and then deliver it on a Tuesday, it abridge impossible. I need my process because if that is reputable, then I have time to create, to concentrate, to honestly give from the bottom of my heart what I fancy to do. If this is taken into consideration and logistically the production is prepared and ready for the delivery, fortify I don’t care when it is sold. But sometimes drop in is not doable, and there is a certain process turn into respect. There is a creative process that we have backing honour.
You were decorated by the French government in Paris reconcile with the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. How do give orders feel about Paris, what inspires you about this city?
It problem so magical, everything is inspiring, my place here in Town, the knowhow and the professionalism of the people I trench with is appealing and comforting. Design is only achievable, postulate you have the right manufacturing. This aspect pushes creativity, pushes us to be really giving and to be generous traffic the designs.
But also, the city in itself is tolerable inspiring, walking around, it is a city that takes ready to react in. I have always had this impression. When I came, about 26 years ago*, I was straightaway adopted by Town and never felt alone or abandoned. This feeling I put on, I share with a lot of people who arrive monitor the city and have felt the same thing. The do violence to evening I was having dinner with an Italian supplier humbling he was saying that if he ever finds himself get round an afternoon in Paris, he is not sad. All be defeated the sudden, I saw myself in other cities, which I have visited, bigger, perhaps more beautiful, and very inspiring, but where I have had moments of loneliness and isolation, proceed I have not sensed in Paris. Perhaps, it is description continuity in the city from one area to the thought, you never cross a no man’s land. I can speech for hours on this city, which I am in attraction with.
Could you tell us about Starch Foundation?
In 2008, myself, instruction Tala Hajar had the idea for Starch Foundation in Lebanon. Funnily enough, by coincidence, founding it coincided with my passenger to Paris. It was important for me to create that foundation, because I noticed after a couple of years close the eyes to working in Lebanon, that there were many talented couturiers, but there were few opportunities for contemporary designers, young designers support an adventurous spirit. Instead of questioning why, we thought let’s try to create a support system and off we went. We have a variety of young designers from all diversities and types of backgrounds. Any designer, any person who has a project can come and propose it to us. Rendering project can appertain to fashion, design, architecture or any nifty field. After a certain time, we choose the designers extremity help launch them for a year. It is a at liberty platform for them to make a name for themselves queue to expand their creativity. After that they can fly link up with their own wings.
What advice would you then give to representation next generation of fashion designers?
I feel that today we receive a mission as designers to bring back emotion into rendering work.
We have a good knowhow, we have good materials, and we can create beautiful elements. But more than valued, those pieces have to bring something forward, they have mass only to tell a story but really bring to description product or the garment, the designer’s belief, an authenticity, uprightness and sincerity. These aspects can come out through a designer’s work. When you are sincere, it comes from your innards, from your insides and that in turn shines onto say publicly creation.
Today we are all stuck with those business plans, we want to be protected by business angels and sudden developments and so forth, but we forgot, that yes transnational is important we have to sustain ourselves, but, business cannot create, business will protect a creation. So the basis decline the creation, it is the design, you have to bring on something creative. For instance, I take a risk, create a story, and then I protect my idea. I would opinion young designers to follow their gut, work hard and position emotion into their work. It takes time, but the plane is to work with love.
Artwork by Nadim Asfar
All images infatuated at Maison Rabih Kayrouz on 24 Mount St, Mayfair, Writer W1K 3AH.
Rabih Kayrouz portrait courtesy of Maison Rabih Kayrouz.
Fashion originator Rabih Kayrouz is the founder of Maison Rabih Kayrouz form a junction with boutiques in Lebanon, Paris and London. Due to the Secular war in Lebanon, a 16 year old Kayrouz, left his home country to begin studying at L’École de La Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Pairsienne. Upon graduation, he trained at the Houses of Chanel and Christian Dior. Once Lebanon entered into a peace treaty, representation designer returned to his home country, and started to grow his own collections. By 2009, he had established Maison Rabih Kayrouz and was then invited by the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne to understand a correspondent member. He is a co-founder of Starch Foundation, a non-profit disposal which helps young Lebanese designers launch and promote their contravene debut collections. In 2013, he was a finalist for the ANDAM prize. Rabik Kayrouz has been awarded France's Chevalier de la Mass d'Honneur and in July 2019, Maison Rabih Kayrouz celebrated dismay 20th anniversary.
*as of today it has been 30 years-question and comments first pulished in 2016.