A gown with embroidered silk marionettes extending from the skirt, a dress bustle containing the silhouette of an illuminated stage, a gold headdress that surrounds the wearer like a basilica dome — these are just a few of the fashion spectacles visitors to the Legion of Honor will see in “Guo Pei: Couture Fantasy.”
The ensembles on display have very little to do with clothing that serves a real-world purpose. But that’s part of what makes the new exhibition, which runs through Sept. 5, so special.
The famed Chinese designer Guo Pei is the kind of world builder usually found in fiction, film or television. From the moment visitors enter “Couture Fantasy,” it’s clear they’re now in a realm that exists only in Guo Pei’s extensive imagination, one where Gothic arches become the shape of a bodice, pleats and ruffles pile into pastry-like silhouettes, and gilt platform shoes take on staggering heights.
“What we’re showing in this exhibition are true fantasy pieces that she created for these theatrical performances on the runway,” said Jill D’Alessandro, the curator in charge of costume and textile arts at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. “She sees the couture runway like a form of theater. What we’re showing here never really was made for a client base to wear.”
The work on view in “Couture Fantasy,” which occupies the lower-level temporary exhibition space as well as areas of the permanent collection on the first floor of the Legion of Honor, is beyond even the exclusive custom fashion of the Paris haute couture world. The clothes are almost ceremonial, but it’s not correct to call them costuming either. “Wearable art” or “textile sculpture” are more fitting terms for pieces like the conjoined double gown or the dress with steel wire vines exploding from the heart, both designs from 2019’s appropriately titled “Alternate Universe” collection.
“Our human life is a collection of various stories,” Guo Pei told The Chronicle through an interpreter in a recent video interview from Beijing. “I feel that language actually is lacking in the way to express these kinds of ideas. I prefer to have a collection, a design, for people to view so they have a way to visualize art and what I want to inspire them, and have a way to feel and sense what I experience.”
Guo Pei, 55, has had a prolific career in China in ready-to-wear as well as in Paris haute couture since being invited to join the governing fashion group known as the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture in 2015. With her grandly themed collections and attention to artisan techniques like bead and crystal embellishment, featherwork and, especially, a unique style of embroidery that combines three traditional Chinese techniques, she is touted as an expert craftsperson.
In China, she is also known for dressing stars like actor Li Bingbing and singer Song Zuying, creating the costumes for the 2014 film “The Monkey King,” and designing a number of looks for the 2008 Summer Olympics.
Meanwhile in the United States, Guo Pei is best known for designing the trailing, 14-foot-long yellow ensemble trimmed with fur that Grammy-winning singer and Fenty designer Rihanna wore to the Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute Gala in 2015 for the launch of the exhibition “China Through the Looking Glass.” Guo Pei’s work was also featured extensively in that exhibition, but her look for the pop star made such an impression that it has come to define her for many in the West. That ensemble, however, is notably not part of “Couture Fantasy.”
“That dress means a lot to me. It’s a very important dress to my career, not only as a designer, but a Chinese designer,” said Guo Pei. “I’ve exhibited that dress so many times in the United States … (but this time) I was thinking to show more of my other collections to audiences.”
For D’Alessandro, that one garment does not, and should not, define Guo Pei’s career. She felt that to include it “would draw too much attention away from the rest of her body of work.”
“Couture Fantasy” will no doubt change that primary association for many in San Francisco. The expertly curated show features more than 80 ensembles from Guo Pei’s collections, including “An Amazing Journey in a Childhood Dream” from 2007, which referenced matador silhouettes and embroidery; 2015’s “Garden of the Soul,” with its botanical fantasies; the medieval-inspired “Legends” from fall 2017; and spring 2018’s “Elysium,” which used enough gold foil in designs to humble El Dorado.
The exhibit begins in the downstairs gallery where D’Alessandro’s contextualization of Guo Pei’s work sets the stage. The curator’s groupings and text panels help visitors begin to make connections between the garments and Guo Pei’s inspirations, which span the East-West gamut. Once you’ve absorbed Pei’s fashion dreamscapes downstairs, the presentation upstairs will have an even greater impact.
For all the beauty and wow factor of the garments themselves, what works so well in “Couture Fantasy” is the pairings created with the museum’s permanent collection. It’s a scheme that was used under Fine Arts Museums Director Thomas Campbell when he was director of the Metropolitan Museum during “China: Through the Looking Glass.” Curator of contemporary art Claudia Schmuckli has also used the concept to great success in her contemporary art interventions at the Legion of Honor.
Guo Pei is a designer who has created a fluid conversation between certain traditional Chinese aesthetic references and European art, decorative arts and historical design. To see gowns with blue and white Ming porcelain patterns from 2010’s “1002 Nights” on display next to 19th century Chinese bowls and German and British porcelain in similar schemes further illustrates their connections.
Likewise, the museum’s gold-adorned ceiling from Spain’s Palacio de Altamira takes on new relevance when paired with a Guo Pei ensemble with a similar religious theme. Period rooms like the 1781 Salon Doré and 1735-40 Louis XV room also feel reactivated in the presence of the clothing, with Guo Pei’s work matching the spaces’ spirit of excess exquisitely.
“As a Chinese designer, the influence of the Silk Road just permeates right into this East-West (idea),” said D’Allesandro. “As she says, ‘I don’t really differentiate between the two.’ We need to break down those binary versions and start to look at this international world that we live in.”
For the work of a Chinese designer to create new relevance for a highly European collection shows just how little the barriers between East and West have ever mattered in the history of art, and how much they continue to be broken down in forward-looking institutions.
“Guo Pei: Couture Fantasy”: 9:30 a.m.-5:15 p.m. Tuesdays-Sunday. Through Sept. 5. $15-$30. Legion of Honor, Lincoln Park, 100 34th Ave., S.F. 415-750-3600. www.famsf.org