FASHION AS ART: Guo Pei Couture Dresses at the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, CA

 

Guo Pei: Couture Fantasy at the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, CA

The Guo Pei fashion/art show at the Legion of Honor art museum in San Francisco is amazing--more like sculpture and costumes than real clothes. And it is not just the clothes--it is the shoes, hats, hair, jewelry--all designed to go together. Part of the show is downstairs in the special exhibition gallery. Upstairs the models are placed next to pieces in the permanent collection. 

Painting by Peter Paul Rubens. Portrait of Rogier Clarisse, ca. 1621

The figures are very cleverly positioned --like a model wearing a dress with a ruffled skirt next to a 17th century portrait of a man with a ruffed collar, or a patterned dress placed in front of a tapestry. One of my favorites is a figure with a large helmet shaped headpiece standing under a large domed ceiling—like a pair of nesting eggs.

Ensemble (dress and hood) from the Legends collection, Spring/Summer 2017. Silk embroidered with synthetic fiber, embellished with synthetic opals and Swarovski crystals and rhinestones.

The Guo Pei exhibit opened in April and has been extended to November 27, 2022, due to popular demand. For more information and to reserve tickets, go to the Legion of Honor website.

Each room in the exhibition gallery is devoted to a particular collection, each with a theme. The exhibit in the opening room, called “Inheritance” displays two traditional embroidered Chinese robes and explains how opulent embroidery, inspired by this ancient art, is a signature of Guo Pei’s work.
(Throughout the exhibit information panels, in both English and Chinese, provide information about the dresses and about where they fit in Guo Pei’s career.)

As a young girl growing up during the Cultural Revolution, Guo Pei found solace and inspiration in her maternal grandmother whose stories of elaborately embroidered robes enthralled the future couturier. As a young designer working for brand-name companies, Guo Pei longed to design embroidered clothing. However, richly embellished clothing, forbidden during the Cultural Revolution, had not yet regained popularity as fashionable dress.

Today, Guo Pei’s studio employs 450 craftspeople, of which 300 are embroiderers. Guo Pei and her team have developed their own interpretation of traditional needlework, creating a style that combines techniques from Chinese embroidery with Indian, Russian, and European stitches.(Notes from an exhibition panel.)

Guo Pei: Couture Fantasy celebrates the extraordinary designs of Guo Pei—hailed as China's first couturier—and includes more than 80 works from the past two decades highlighting her most important collections shown on Beijing and Paris runways.

The dresses in the exhibit range from elegant to whimsical to bizarre to almost impossible to wear. (You can go online to view fashion shows of Guo Pei’s designs, with models actually walking down the runway.)

This gown is a puppet theater, complete with puppet dolls dangling on strings! A monkey puppeteer on the bodice controls the dolls with a string.

Each Guo Pei dress is unique.   

The skirt on this dress, made of metal strips, weighs 20 pounds and is attached to a belt that sits on the model's hips.

It was impossible to resist taking photos. Here are just a few of my favorites.

Playful birds perch on this model's pigtails. Collection: Alternate Universe, Fall/Winter 2019-2020.

This model appears ready to take flight.

Like a giant wearable playing card, this elaborate dress features a long train. Collection: Himalaya, Spring/Summer 2020.

In her Fall/Winter 2019-2020 collection, Alternate Universe, Guo Pei envisioned an afterlife in which animals preside over humanity.

It is hard to believe that one could walk in these shoes.

The dress, made of pleated silk and embroidered with 24-karat gold metallic threads, is from the Collection of the Dragon, 2012.

These dresses are inspired by the typical blue and white designs on traditional Chinese ceramics.

“The culture of China is just like the blood that runs through my veins, it’s my life…China has more than 5,000 years of history, even longer culturally speaking. That history has greatly enriched my designs and is essentially a foundation of my work.” Guo Pei