Rad Hourani: Unisex

The Designer Distils His Androgynous Ethos with Choreographer Édouard Lock

Ballet dancer Zofia Tujaka transforms from ingénue to hard-edged vamp in Unisex, a neo-noir short directed by Rad Hourani. Shot in Montreal’s Phi Centre, the atmospheric performance portrays Tujaka as a nymph-like creature gesticulating shapes to a haunting score by New York composer Nico Muhly. “Before I started designing my collections I bought a video and a photo camera,” explains the Jordan-born designer, who has cultivated a following with his all-black, cerebral collections from his Paris studio. “For me, movement is as important as design; as much as literature, as much as food.” Enlisting David Bowie and Frank Zappa collaborator Édouard Lock for the original choreography, the piece comes as part of Hourani’s multi-channel exhibition, Seamless, featuring five-years of graphic design work, photography and bespoke looks from his unisex haute couture collection. “For me, Édouard’s work represents the masculine and the feminine, the fast and the slow, the hard and the soft—all the contradictions.”