Guo Pei (Q4208)
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Guo Pei is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Guo Pei |
Guo Pei is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
2015
fashion designer
Guo Pei titled her couture collection “Savannah,” after the grasslands in Africa. On a call from Beijing, she said she was inspired by the savanna’s unity and balance; it’s home to an incredible diversity of plants and animals living in harmony, often with little exposure to humans. “Animals, plants, humans, everything that has life on this earth is equal,” she said. “We should all love and care for each other.”Pei chose to celebrate a few animals in particular—elephants, cheetahs, zebras, and giraffes—because they’re “the most energetic and powerful” in the savanna. In a quite literal interpretation, she transposed their likenesses directly onto her clothes: A graceful cheetah was felted and embroidered onto a black dress; a jacket with grassy fringe was intricately hand-stitched with a landscape of giraffes and acacia trees; a zebra’s head curved around the neck of a raspberry top, its striped mane fanning out at the shoulders; and, a bit disconcertingly, an elephant’s face was sculpted into the back of a crinkly gray jacket, its 3D trunk furling out just above the model’s backside.The tail-like effect will deter some women, and the scale of the animals on other pieces—like the finale dress, a bubble mini with two giraffes reaching for the model’s face—lacked subtlety. But it has to be said that the craftsmanship is exquisite: Pei’s behind-the-scenes video documents her Beijing atelier transforming little tufts of wool into the stunningly detailed animals via hand-embroidery and needle-punching, a technique she introduced for the first time this season. It’s also worth pointing out that Pei chose not to use animal hides in her homage to the savanna; the material you see here is actually Piñatex, a leather alternative made from pineapple leaves.Good intentions aside, Pei’s feelings about unity and love will be clouded by what many will perceive as appropriation. In light of the Black Lives Matter movement, the idea of a designer being “inspired by Africa” feels categorically tone-deaf—and the models’ tribal makeup doesn’t help. More glaringly, none of Pei’s models are Black. (She said her dream was to cast women from all over the world, including Africa, but the pandemic made it nearly impossible.) She no doubt began working on this collection months ago, long before the killing of George Floyd, but that doesn’t change much.
Fashion has moved away from its old habit of cherry-picking references and motifs from different cultures; lifting species out of Africa for a couture collection made thousands of miles away, without Black models or decision makers, would have felt problematic no matter the circumstances.Due to time constraints and a lack of a physical show, Pei said her vision doesn’t feel complete and plans to release a second installment in January. She might spend the next few months refining her message and figuring out a better way to communicate it through the clothes. She should consider how she might be able to give back too; maybe a percentage of proceeds could go toward protecting these animals—they’re all either endangered or vulnerable—or she could donate to climate change efforts. Parts of Africa are experiencing the effects of global warming, including rising temperatures, droughts, and desertification.
9 July 2020
Guo Pei inhabits a creative universe all her own, where unbridled imagination meets arcane symbology in clothing that is both sumptuously opulent and theatrical. All this hyperbole, though, can’t even come near to describing the sense of wonder one experiences when inspecting her creations up close. The savoir faire of her Beijing-based ateliers is stellar.For this couture collection, Guo had us traveling to the snowcapped peaks of the Himalayas. It’s not the most summery of destinations for a spring couture collection, but she seemed unconcerned by such mundane considerations. As she tells it, the Himalayas are a holy place, the residence of the gods and the sacred temple of the soul, where the spirit soars to reach the divine. Never mind that Guo herself has never been to the Himalayas. “What I’m presenting in the show is just my own interpretation of this mysterious, spiritually powerful place,” she said, speaking through her daughter who served as a translator. “When I was young, in my heart haute couture was like the Himalayas, the pinnacle of the pyramid for me.” In her case, the summit has definitely been reached: She is a megastar designer in China, was listed as one ofTimemagazine’s 100 most influential people in 2016, and—you might remember—dressed Rihanna for the 2015 Met Ball. The Himalayan gods are already smiling on her, and with exceptional ateliers at her disposal, the Himalayan skies aren’t even the limit.Guo has a love for antique textiles, which she collects and often reworks in her collections. “The Himalayas have been there since the beginning of time,” she mused. “I wanted to use textiles as antique as possible to give a sense of permanence.” She sourced rare obi fabrics from Japan that she magically transformed; hundreds of precious silk kimono belts were cut into squares and reassembled on their reverse side, exposing the yarn in an amazing, beautifully nuanced fringed texture. “It’s a mysterious design,” she said. “It can be read in so many different ways.”Continuing on her spiritual theme, Guo had traditional Buddhist thangkas embroidered on the reconstructed fabrics. The buddhas of the three realms and the mysteries of the circle of life were lavishly rendered in three-dimensional, gold-thread motifs on thick brocades.
This rich fabric was cut into tubular-sleeve capes that trailed on the floor or into imperial manteaus completely lined in white ribbons of tulle that painstakingly curlicued into rosettes so as to resemble a soft snow-white fur. In the designer’s vision, it was a symbol of purity: “They are snow goddesses,” she said.As always with Guo, shapes were as extravagant as they get. Simple silhouettes inspired by kimonos and Tibetan garb progressed into more elaborate ideas, indulging her penchant for visual excess. There were short skater skirts made of layers of organza that sprouted feathers and bloomed with 3D embroidered flowers. These were no ordinary blooms though; Guo had selected an extremely rare and precious Himalayan plant with prodigious healing properties. Also rather impressive was the show’s finale look: a ceremonial brocade cape with a majestic train, a resplendent Buddist thangka embroidered in gold threads, pearls, and precious gemstones at its back. It looked spectacular. When it comes to showmanship, Guo is definitely in command.
24 January 2020
Guo Pei described this collection as “an alternate universe,” which may or may not have represented the afterlife. A sandy runway was decorated with an arch of entwined black branches populated by black crows suggesting a macabre portal into her imagination. “When I was a child, I often thought about death,” the couturier said through a translator. “Where do we go? I think a lot of people think about this.”From the opening dress, with its two-for-one Marie Antoinette pannier skirt inhabited by ghostly twins, to the penultimate gown that turned the model into a glamorous mummy, these were otherworldly, largely colorless creations destined for the most high-ranking souls (whose diversity, it should be noted, was questionably lacking). Among the more classical garments were ecclesiastical robes, weightless Renaissance dresses, Elizabethan ruffs, 1950s cocktail frocks, and a corseted kimono dress.But there was also a bird’s-nest look with a view to the incubating eggs; a dress that featured a bloodred heart from which branches and flowers projected outward like an overgrowth of arteries and veins; and a 17th-century crinoline staged with preciously outfitted miniature dolls. For potential clients, meanwhile, there were several designs—the graphic feathered bodysuit or a romantic 18th-century dress, say—that could have lives after the runway.In using a type of hemp made from pineapple leaves, Pei elevated an earthy textile into a sublime material that, at times, resembled classical statuary. To this she added rich, artisanal embroideries in gold, silver, black, and blue that were loaded with all creatures great and small (elephants, monkeys, snakes, spiders, beetles) and coded with symbols of life and death. To truly appreciate the significance, each dress would require a decryption manual. What’s clear is that they required tremendous effort.When a couture dress is described in quantitative terms as requiring 100-plus hours of embroidery, well, it’s hard to imagine that level of workmanship. Pei said today’s final dress took her seven years, all told. On and off, she returned to this self-contained, somewhat tomblike garden of tulle and embroidered flowers. As a summation of another characteristically opulent collection, it signaled both life and death—only this time as a vibrant expression in color.
4 July 2019
Guo Pei titled her couture collection East Palace. Reached backstage at the Palais de Tokyo, the spirited Chinese designer offered the following explanation through a translator: “The Palace of the East isn’t only a building, but also refers to women, because in Chinese culture you have different sayings about women in palaces. It also refers to the outfits and garments women are wearing in these palaces. And you’ll see it in my collection, which reflects all these outfits and garments. As for the people in the audience,” Pei continued, “I don’t really want them to understand the Eastern culture of the Palace of the East. I want them to read all this through their own imagination.”She certainly set the scene for us. A rendition of the Hall of Supreme Harmony in Beijing’s Forbidden City was built in the belly of the museum. Majestic red columns acted as a backdrop for a long parade of hyperbolically elaborate creations. The show had a stately cadence, accentuated by the platforms worn by the models. Exquisitely constructed from the same fabrics used for the dresses, with heels carved like precious antiques, they forced the models to walk at an exceedingly slow pace.The dresses were so spectacular and theatrical that defining them as sumptuous would be an understatement. It was a pity that the audience could not see them at closer range, to take in the embroidery techniques. We only captured glimpses from afar: an exceptional floral pattern gracing the long, trailing sleeves of a ceremonial silk tunic with protruding shoulders, or the perfectly round, rigidly sculpted shape of a bustier dress’s pouf skirt, embroidered with three-dimensional pale gold imperial dragons along its flat-pleated surface.There was definitely a compelling extravagance in these creations. You had the feeling that for Pei this wasn’t only a show of garments, but that she was presenting a ceremony. It certainly had ingenuity—and fearlessness.
23 January 2019
The upside of Guo Pei’s show starting late was that time could be spent appreciating the life-size Romanesque, Gothic, and Neoclassic molds within the vast gallery of the Cité de l’Architecture. But whereas most of us would be content to simply gaze at these facade fragments and detailed maquettes, the ever-ambitious Chinese designer interpreted them as vaulted pannier skirts, arched necklines, quatrefoil lace, and rose window embroideries. Rare is the person who looks at a cupola rising from a church and sees a ball gown tiered in bronze organza. Brunelleschi would have smiled.Pei’s ambitious couture creations often project outward from the body, and previous collections have explored religious subject matter, so perhaps a meditation on Gothic churches was inevitable. The show notes described her intention to evoke architecture’s “beauty of strength” via garments that suggest “a dialogue between the human body and spatial dimension.” That these dresses pushed the limits of fashion, in other words, was exactly what she set out to do. “Haute couture, if it’s really interesting, doesn’t have to be close to everyday life, and very few designers have to dare to use their extreme designs to express themselves,” she said through a translator following the show. “It doesn’t have to be wearable like ready-to-wear.”No one would deny the technical mastery of building a recessed window into a dress, yet several looks proved rigid even when their materials were actually light and sheer. Flying buttresses were never meant to be twisted into bodices. Platforms with heels like columns seem unlikely to get anyone closer to God. It’s just too bad the collection comes as the Costume Institute’s “Heavenly Bodies” exhibition is under way, as there would have been several promising options to showcase. And with those extreme constructions off in museum vitrines, the remaining styles might speak to clients or celebrities looking for original, elaborate eveningwear: a dress like a gilded spire or ivory pants embroidered in black tracery, for example. That Pei opted to realize so many looks in black ultimately gave the collection coherence while casting an edgier reading on her divine theme—gothic grandeur for goth girls.
5 July 2018
“We are giants!” said one of the models backstage as a sneak peek spoiled the surprise that one of them would be encircled in an embroidered and gilded ovoid shell that might have represented the sun, moon, or perhaps a golden egg. Another looked as though she had been outfitted directly from the forest floor in lustrous leaves and tangles of undergrowth. The recurring presence of dark blue floral embroideries hinted that this could have been dawn or dusk—the so-calledl’heure bleue,when twilight casts a mystical blue aura on the world. Each model, no matter what she was embodying through her dress, towered over the heads of humans upon stepping into crystal-like platforms that hovered above the ground. With their gothic crowns and fantastical halos, they embodied Guo Pei’s extraordinary imagination, once again elevating her pursuit of handcraft to the sublime.Through a translator, the designer explained her vision as something along the lines of representing the life force of roots and flowers, which explained the stylized structure suspended above the stage of the Cirque d’Hiver venue. “Roots are the source of life and vitality,” she said, offering “primitive” as a description of these creations that were anything but. “Without roots, there’s not life. This world is a very mysterious place, but it’s linked intimately with our lives. That’s why the tree is onstage, and you’ll see a lot of flowers.”With much of the fabric research done in Switzerland, Pei uses her atelier in the Chaoyang District of Beijing to realize embroideries worthy of royal or religious ceremonial dress. While this extreme flower theme doesn’t technically overlap with the Costume Institute’s forthcoming exhibition “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination,” several designs would easily qualify for the gala. From her otherworldly gothic theme last Spring to today, a divine aspect remains consistent in Pei’s work. How else to account for all that gold? “I like gold, obviously! I think gold embodies what is at the top in terms of knowledge and wealth,” she said, before offering something of an epiphany: “I think it is the color of our souls.”Now a regular presence on the Paris calendar, Pei has elected to reserve her fantastical visions for January, while proposing a comparatively wearable offering in July. In other words, don’t expect a similarly ornate adventure next season.
But what links them and reflects back on her immense skill is a complete and utter devotion to the handcraft of couture. “You have to have time to do this,” she said. “Just as it embodies life, it is the result of a lifetime.”
25 January 2018
There was no way that Guo Pei could outdo the epic proportions of last season’s Legends theme, which conjured up fantastical queens of this world and beyond. Today, she reined in that ceremonial splendor and concentrated on the legendary aspects of haute couture itself—silhouettes that expressed bygone glamour newly infused with intense levels of metallic luster and embellished shine. “That time, I wanted to express a feeling,” she explained postshow. “This time, it’s a lot simpler; it’s a tribute to the era of haute couture, when life was more beautiful and dresses were more beautiful, as well.” She manifested this nostalgia in a wide array of filmy floor-sweeping gowns, contoured fit-and-flare cocktail numbers, and seductress mermaid styles. Bodices fanned upward for added drama, and gilded embroideries retained a regal air. For all the radiance of her fabrics, there was more still in the Chopard gems; thehaute joailleriecollaboration was overseen by Caroline Scheufele, the brand’s copresident and artistic director. Seeing the diamond drop earrings or emerald-studded necklaces perfectly matched with a Guo Pei design suddenly turned each look into an exceedingly expensive proposition. Granted, when factoring in the towering stiletto platform shoes, this would have been a convenient shopping experience for some of her top clients who continue to dress for the runway show as though it were a state dinner.And what of the red carpet shopping list? Whereas Spring’s egg dress failed to convince, the glistening, multicolored patterned cube-and-stripe dress just might, its motif mix more expressive than ornate. The strapless, streamlined copper gown came as close as one could get to statuesque, while the dimensional lotus (or were they magnolia?) flowers of the final creation felt sufficiently ingenue. The dress in shimmery deep green brocade giving way to velvet was worthy of a portrait, not just a paparazzi photo.Pei noted that this collection took considerably less time to produce—just 30 days, give or take. And though there were double as many looks as last season, the show’s pace was quicker. Sure, the iridescent veils cascading from violet knickers might have been a questionable addition to the haute couture canon, but the model was moving freely.
2 July 2017
You had to be there. Guo Pei presented her extraordinary collection at Conciergerie, where Marie Antoinette was imprisoned immediately prior to her beheading. In a dress specially knit from phosphorescent fabric, the last queen of France made her ghostly return, drifting down the darkened runway to open the show. Her apparition wasn’t strong enough to be captured in photographs, but what followed, once the lights went up, was a procession of 19 ornate creations two years in the making. Over-the-top would be an understatement.Some context: Guo arrived at her theme, Legend, after visiting the 18th-century cathedral in the Swiss town of St. Gallen, where she had traveled to meet with premium textile manufacturer, Jakob Schlaepfer. They subsequently custom-developed the radiant woven gold fabric in Look 17 from metal fiber and silk thread. The mural motif appearing on the same filmy fabric came from the cathedral’s archived drawings of its dome. And last year, when Guo was in Paris for her Spring ’16 collection, she happened upon a good supply of rare gold embroidery floss at the Saint-Ouen market, which she used to enrich her multi-layer embroidery and beadwork. Up close, the patterning on bodices and gowns—never mind the boned balloon sleeves or bejeweled crosses—would suggest a deep dive into European monarchical and ecclesiastical dress. These dames were epic.Perched on gold platforms sculpted like reliquaries, some also balancing crowns or, in one case, a crystal orb, they depicted medieval queens and baroque debutantes. For every robe representing the divine, some other looks suggested that Guo was giving thought to today’s reigning divas. The princess with the chastity belt attached to pink hip-hugging pants was mildly provocative, although not as much as the alien infanta of the penultimate look.And then there was Carmen Dell’Orefice who had already walked for Guo in 2010. Now 85—and 70 years from her firstVoguecover—she agreed to an encore. “She’s the queen of models,” gushed Guo, post-show. “She has the spirit of a queen, and the spirit of dedication and devotion.” Escorted by two attendants and dressed in a blood red gown cascading with crystals, she was a magnificently regal vision worthy of a Matthew Barney film. Which is to point out that the costume aspect of this collection was truly inescapable. When asked whether she would like to see such efforts worn, Pei replied, “I don’t care; the creation is enough.” And what a ton of creation it was.
27 January 2017
Those who arrived at Guo Pei following Vetements no doubt experienced some version of culture shock. Just a few moments earlier, they were processing androgynous models in achingly cool street clothes; now they were watching a procession of hyper-feminized empresses. The only way to reconcile such absolute extremes was to appreciate that fashion today welcomes both. Pei used the wordencounteras a common thread to describe creations that were made from anything but. Fringes looked fiber-optic; a dragon arose from a mass of copper mesh; most of all, there was gold in every wearable form. Backstage, her husband, Cao Bao Jie (better known as Jack) noted how some of the materials and embroideries were developed a year or more in advance; he flipped through a binder of metallic, filmy swatches from the renowned textile manufacturer Jakob Schlaepfer, drawing attention to their Swiss origins. These pseudo-futuristic fabrics did more than emit a high-gloss shine; they suggested that Pei’s design considerations stretch beyond costume drama, which was the obvious conclusion when each passage represented a different rarefied archetype: ice queen, Art Deco diva, Belle Epoque enchantress, Russian princess, first lady, neo-Joséphine. The level of craftsmanship never wavered but shone brightest with the final dress; its single peaked shoulder, jeweled embroideries, and funneling train ridged in countless pearlescent embellishments seemed destined for a queen bee.Still, Pei’s lustrous chopine-stiletto hybrids were uncomfortable to watch, let alone to wear. Women who hold positions of power today appear highly mobile, even if they’re just walking a red carpet. Earlier this year, Pei was profiled inThe New Yorker, a piece likely prompted by the intrigue of her infamous yellow gown for Rihanna. Judith Thurman wrote that Pei told her, in no uncertain terms: “I’m not a feminist,” adding, “I think women should be like water: It looks soft and tender, but it’s very powerful. The women among the crowd wearing Pei’s gala attire to a fashion show suggest that the market for her idealized vision exists, even if it goes against the flow.
5 July 2016