Guo Pei – The Dreamer and the Visionary ( first posted on thebarefootfoodie.org on 12 Sep 2019 )

 

Guo Pei – The Dreamer and the Visionary

SEPTEMBER 12, 2019ASIAN CIVILISATION MUSUEM, BAREFOOT ARTS

The Dreamer

As a child growing up during the cultural revolution under Mao, Guo Pei’s world was shrouded in a landscape of bleakness, suppression and conformity. Everyone dressed alike – in grey, navy or black cotton “worker” outfits, or in green military garb with the red armbands.

At night, Guo Pei’s world was magically transformed by her grandmother who lived during the Qing Dynasty. She would be gently lulled into sleep with stories of Empresses and Concubines, along with their resplendent clothes and lifestyle. The stuff that dreams are made of…and what Guo Pei did not see with her eyes, she saw vividly in her mind…

The Exhibition

Couture and Culture, or a series of happy coincidences. This exhibition features 29 of Guo Pei’s creations, showing at the Asian Civilisation Museum. ( ACM ) It began with a Chinese wedding dress by Guo Pei, worn by a celebrity bride, Angelababy, in 2015. It caught the attention of our local museum curator, who noticed the similarities between this dress and that of a certain 1930s Peranakan wedding dress which travelled to the Musee de Quai Branly in Paris in 2010.

When contacted, Guo Pei confirmed it was indeed this dress she saw in Paris in 2010 which inspired her to design Chinese wedding dresses that can be heirlooms and lasting legacies for generations. The rest, as they say… is history.

The ” Omelette ” dress worn by Rihanna at the Met Gala, May 2015. That year’s theme was ” China Through the Looking Glass” Rihanna googled and found this dress. Initially, Guo Pei wondered whether Rihanna could pull it off since a model fainted at a 2012 runway show under its staggering weight of 25kg. Rihanna wore it like a second skin and overnight, it made the world sit up and take notice of Guo Pei. She was invited to show at the oh-so-prestigious Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture in 2016 for their twice yearly runway extravaganzas.( Next year, in 2020, she will become an official member after playing guest for 5 years in a row )

The 1930s Peranakan influence( left ) that inspired a celebrity wedding dress ( centre ) Dress aside, the wedding reportedly costs US$31 million, and was dubbed ” Wedding of the Decade” featuring ” the Kim Kadashan of China

A fully beaded ornate bridal gown with 250,000 pearl seed beads, over 450,000 pearls, and 31 large South Sea pearls. Five circular purple medallions bear Chinese characters of double happiness. Notice the sleeves are in the shape of hooves, featured in several of her bridal pieces – a throwback to the Qing Dynasty where the monarchy were Manchus who rode horses.

A Kimono wedding gown with a distinct Japanese flavour. Hoof sleeves add a Chinese twist

Guo Pei told this story of one mother who came with her entire life savings of CNY 50000 ( US$7000 ) for a custom wedding dress for her daughter. When Guo Pei suggested using the money for something else more practical, the mother insisted that the wedding dress would be a lasting memento of her love for her daughter. ( Guess the lucky bride got her dress after all )

Nine dragons in a tubular top rest gracefully on six ” waves” of layered red organza. The zipper at the back ends at the hips, allowing a real live model some room to breathe with criss-cross tiebacks.

The ” Arab Princess” from 1002 Nights Collection. Guo Pei likens the human soul to a garden. When it is blooming, your soul is thriving.

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These few hundred red silk embroidered flowers belonged to the Qing dynasty era. Guo Pei diligently sought them out and transported them to their former glory in this gown aptly named ” Palace Flower ” It took 10,000 hours to put this together.

Inspired by the red silk embroidered flowers of the royal place, Guo Pei follows up with cascading waves of blue silk flowers on this gown from her ” Legend of the Dragon” collection.

A bustier dress with matching jacket from the Courtyard Collection, 2016. Guo Pei’s debut before an international audience at the Paris Fashion Week. A rather ” tentative” and conservative approach by Guo Pei in her early days, and quite unlike what you can see of her today.

The woman wears the pants and sprouts wings too! Lots of overtones and layers in this piece, if looking at this as a piece of contemporary art. Red would be the colour of the Communist Party during the cultural revolution.

The Blue – and White Porcelain Dress from 1002 Nights Collection. It is a scultural masterpiece. Lotuses in full bloom surrounded by five distinctive borders were hand-drawn and hand-painted before they were embroidered and sewn with more than 10,000 Swarovski crystals It won the best National Costume for Miss China at the 2012 Miss Universe Contest. Can anything else even come close?

A sneaky peek under the skirt reveals dainty shoes which are true to form. They represent the tallest pair of shoes in the entire collection which ranged from 18 cm to 40 cm.

It was also the fashion during the Qing era for men and women to wear high heels, while some, like Guo Pei’s Grandma, had bound feet!

The train of this dress from the Legend of the Dragon Collection flares out like roof tiles in a typical Beijing courtyard hutong. It is stuffed with cotton to give a 3-D effect. Many Singaporeans like to equate it with local comfort food!

This Snow Queen Dress weighs 50 kg in silk, swarovski crystals, gold and silver embroidery, fox fur, beads, brass. At its debut on the Beijing runway in 2009,American Supermodel, Carmen Dell’Orefice ,wore it at seventy-eight years old, supported by two young burly hunks on both sides. Guo Pei’s ideal of a strong woman is one who can bear the weight of responsibility, and step into those impossible high heels too.

The Weight of Responsibility

Inspired by Cathedrals in Europe, the skirt is spun out of custom-made metallic paper fabric in collaboration with a Swiss fabric producer. A cross is featured prominently across the bosom with hardly anything else underneath.

From the Elysium Collection, Guo Pei pays homage to traditional artisans in basket weaving

3-D sculptural dragons from metal wire are perched majestically on both arms and on the train of this gown from the Legend of the Dragon collection.

As a child, Guo Pei once asked her grandmother for a yellow dress. Grandma told her that ” Yellow is Forbidden” It is no coincidence that Guo Pei makes it a point to include gold representing resplendent yellow in her every collection.

A relatively lightweight dress from ” An Amazing Journey in a Childhood Dream Collection” Churns up visions of an accordion or even food, as in kueh lapis or mille feuille. Guo Pei was pregnant when she was working on this series.

” Maintaining a young heart full of innocence and curiosity is an essential element to becoming a successful designer” says Guo Pei, who has amassed a collection of more than 400 teddy bears over 20 years.

This dragon robe belongs to the ACM and is part of the Guo Pei Exhibition to show why Yellow is forbidden. Only the Emperor is fit to wear this. The dragon is also the emblem of the ultimate male superiority.

Juxtaposed next to the Dragon Robe are two rather short dresses in a once forbidden colour, complete with exaggerated puff shoulders ( which used to represent power dressing in the 80s ) If you look carefully at the shoes on the left, there are mini dragons and she is stepping all over them,

The Magnificent Gold gown from the Samsara Collection. This is made of pure gold and silver spun thread. It took 50000 hours to complete and is an iconic representation of Guo Pei’s amazing personal journey to create the most beautiful dress possible.

So this is Guo Pei – the Dreamer and the Visionary. Childlike, authentic, staying true to her convictions and her roots, but fiercely non-conformist and marches to her own tune

She was the among the first batch of students at a tertiary institution for fashion design in Beijing and came up tops in her batch.

I think of her as a shining example for girls out there in the world, from 1-99 to dare to dream and make that dream come true, no matter what the circumstances may be.

This exhibition is but a fleeting glimpse into her amazing journey of life and the possibilities it presents. Thank You, Guo Pei, for sharing this with us in Singapore at the ACM.

 

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