The Rafi Peer Theatre’s 10-day world performing arts festival, 2004, is being held at the Alhamra Cultural Complex from Nov 27.

As many as 600 artistes of over 33 countries, including India, will perform in various disciplines of performing arts like dance, theatre, music and puppetry.

Chief Minister Pervaiz Elahi will inaugurate the festival. Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz will attend its premier show on Nov 26, a day ahead of its formal launch.

Rafi Peer Theatre directors Faizan Peerzada and Usman Peerzada told newsmen here at the Lahore Press Club on Friday that it was one of the biggest festivals in South Asia.

If street and refined, or luxe and cool sound like fashion-world opposites, Rick Owens brought them together into a beautiful New Age merger in his first Ready-to-Wear show for Revillon furs. (Like Yohji Yamamoto, Owens showed during Couture week, three months ahead of the Spring 2004 pack.) On a sunny Paris morning, in a disused eighteenth-century townhouse, he sent out a collection that fused his trademark underground aesthetic with the luxury pedigree of the French furrier. Over his familiar baseline of fine, stretchy, neutral tanks and cropped, cross-dyed, distressed denims, he layered a succession of soft shrugs, vests, jackets, and coats, constructed in hip melanges of fur and skin.

Lebanese designer weaves exotic look for seasonal show

PARIS: US designer Ralph Rucci gave a master class in the art of pure silhouettes Thursday with his haute couture collection for next winter, while Lebanon’s Elie Saab opted for glamour and glitz.

On the final day of a frenzied week of autumn-winter 2003-04 couture shows in the French capital, Rucci invited fashion editors and his well-heeled clientele to a Paris art gallery to view his understated, elegant creations.

Using a muted color palette of black, taupe, gray and chocolate brown, the New York-based designer unveiled a collection of elegant suits, impeccably cut sheath dresses that skimmed the body and refined coats in cashmere and sable.