Guest of honor at this past week’s Fashion Forward event in Dubai, designer, Rabih Kayrouz, arrived to mentor up-and-coming Middle Eastern talents who dream of one day owning a similar “fashion cred” as this Lebanon-born and Paris-based designer. Throughout his career, Kayrouz’s path has been one of taste and artistry. After studying at the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne and training with the Maisons Dior and Chanel, like many other designers from the region, he created his own label with the help of a private clientele and slowly shifted to a more international one. Now based in a sumptuous house in the middle of Saint Germain Des Près in Paris, Kayrouz took on the role of guide to many up and coming couturiers through STARCH, an annual program helping emerging Lebanese designers for their debut collections. Six young designers are selected each year and mentored by this non-profit organization.
We sat down with Rabih Kayrouz to talk about the fashion event and the realities of the Middle Eastern fashion market.
Hi, Rabih — we last saw you in Paris when we were reviewing your Fall 2013 RTW collection, and now we’re in Dubai.
Hi. I really like the necklace that you are wearing. It’s Shourouk?
Yes.
Where is she from?
She is Tunisian, like me.
OK. Because lately I have been seeing her work at the Le Bon Marché (high-end department store in Paris). She has a style. It’s good.
Yes. She has developed a signature. Actually, this is what I wanted to discuss with you with regards to Middle Eastern fashion. I am under the impression that there are really very few designers that have a signature style. What is lacking?
Authenticity. Unfortunately, many designers design today for the sole purpose of selling tomorrow. And to do that entails designing long dresses, short dresses, and each time we look at a show we are under the impression that we are in a retail shop, where there is something for everyone.
Also, quite simply, maybe they just don’t have a lot to say. To have a real identity—a signature, you have to actually have your own language. Sometimes we are embarrassed to say it, but we don’t have the right formula, the courage, the training—and sometimes, well, sometimes, we have nothing to say at all.
Maybe that’s harsh.
Well, you have to be.
Or, sometimes there is talent but you have to work at it and develop it.
Are you under the impression that here, in the GCC, the path to the top is sometimes shorter than in other parts of the world?
No, the problem with our industry is that here, the sale is easy. What I mean is that the commercial part is quite easy. People start and many applaud them. People will order dresses to be kind, out of friendship, or family links. Or, the designer’s mother’s friends will encourage them. And then the designer thinks he or she is swimming in success.
That’s it. This is a problem.
And then, they all fall into a comfort zone where they are applauded and stop improving.
On Style.com/Arabia we published an article saying that our region doesn’t export fashion—that we don’t culturally export our fashion—unlike countries such as Brazil, with designers like Pedro Lourenço, or Russia, or Iceland. And if we do, it’s the ballgown.
There are many factors behind this.
One is lifestyle. For the day, people like European fashion. At night, they don’t find anything that they can relate to and they go to the local designer because he or she understands them. So the regional fashion responds to a demand—a precise, lifestyle demand. Today, in my talk, I was saying that the Middle Eastern woman is always on a red carpet; she has this star attitude, so these dresses work for her but bring nothing to fashion.
Around me, I am under the impression that being a designer means dressing a star or making a wedding dress.
Everyone wonders why: “Rabih, you still haven’t dressed a star.” But there isn’t just that.
Everyone is surprised that there are no designers with an identity from the Middle East. One, should there be many? Two, should there be any?
As an Arab woman, I would want to see that being done. Azzedine Alaïa never did it but Riccardo Tisci did this. He takes things from our culture and he transforms it.
Yves Saint Laurent created an entire collection inspired from Morocco.
But if Azzedine Alaïa would have introduced the kaftan to Paris, it would have been interpreted differently. We would have said, “Here’s an ethnic designer who is imposing his culture on us.”
When I do a show, I take over the space with my music, my ambiance, my lighting, and when you leave the show, you are bathed in emotion. And today, to be frank, I haven’t seen one designer who moved me emotionally.
You have to tell a story. People are designing dresses. But who is the woman who wants to dress this way?
For example, who is going to wear this dress that we saw with the strip of lace across her bottom?
Yes, but here in the GCC it’s a statement.
But it wasn’t. It was more like an accident.
Perhaps it wouldn’t have been if he had done it in a way where everyone arrived on the catwalk dressed like this. But he didn’t.
A la Hussein Chalayan.
We have to be critical—not to be mean, but to help them to extract the best out of themselves.
Before you have fashion weeks, you have to work on the industry. You have to build the industry.
There has to be one person who can do hair, one person who can do makeup…
Even before that, you have to have someone who knows how to make the clothes.
I want to talk to the organizers and say, if they really want to build a strong identity and something qualitative, there has to be a board that edits the shows. When you are only surrounded by mothers clapping…there is a long way to go. There is a lot of editing to be done.
