Stephane Rolland looks seaward, serving up fluid shapes, liquid beauty at show in France

Fluid shapes, liquid beauty at Stephane Rolland

PARIS — Stephane Rolland looked to the ocean for a fall-winter 2011 haute couture collection Tuesday of sculptural gowns in deep sea blue adorned by oblong appliques that evoked the smooth, wave-caressed shapes of beach stones.

It was a pared-down collection for Rolland, who last season delivered dresses that bristled with mosaics of plexiglass spikes, like a dinosaur’s armor. Where that collection was all hard lines and edges, Tuesday’s was about fluidity and liquidity.

Floor-length capes that were built into the long-sleeve sheath dresses fluttered like gently running water as the models walked. The train on a slate-colored evening gown jiggled like liquid mercury.

A short navy dress covered at the hemline and the cuffs by glinting black oblong shapes — made from rhinestone-studded plexiglass — looked like the deep blue sea washing up on a volcanic beach.

Rolland, who is among the most artistic of Paris couturiers, said he looked for inspiration to dancer Martha Graham and to the rounded, hermetic creations of Indian-born sculptor Anish Kapoor, as well as to memories of a youth spent on France’s Cote d’Azur.

“As a kid, I collected everything, and I used to come back from trips to the beach with my pockets full of these round stones, whose smoothness I really liked,” he told The Associated Press in a preview in his atelier.

Asked if a recent trip to the sea had brought back the childhood memories, Rolland responded. “It’s in me, so deep inside me that I don’t need anything to jog my memory.”