Paris - Caroline Kent
Rad Hourani has been touted as the world’s first creator of unisex couture. The 30 year old Jordanian designer, currently residing in Paris by-way-of Montreal, set himself apart from couture contemporaries at Paris’s spring 2013 haute couture presentations with a starkly androgynous style. Hourani, is best known in fashion circles for his neutral outlook on gender, and his exploration of the ‘grey zone’ between the implied binary oppositions. He recently told press: “I don’t understand why a man has certain things he’s allowed to wear and women have skirts, and flower prints and high heels, I don’t understand who made these rules.” Instead, he promotes an entirely unisex vision, “I think the aesthetic I’m creating is not a man going to a woman’s wardrobe, or a woman wearing men’s clothes.” Since launching his collection in 2007, Hourani’s designs have spread to 130 stores in 30 countries. Hourani sees his unisex vision as “something that’s never been done in high end besides maybe a unisex t-shirt.” And it won’t stop at this Couture collection either, “It’s a language I’m very dedicated to, I think it’s something very important in our society. Unisex isn’t just a garment reference—it implies that age doesn’t exist, religion doesn't exist, and so on. There are no boundaries.”