Retrospective for celebrated designer Guo coming to S.F.
Guo Pei, the internationally famous fashion designer known as China’s “Queen of Couture,” will be celebrated in a new exhibition at the Legion of Honor opening in the spring, the museum has announced.
The show, “Guo Pei: Couture Fantasy,” will run from April 16 to Sept. 5, 2022, and focus on the specialized craft techniques used in constructing Guo’s elaborate creations and on the role Chinese culture and traditional art play in creating her runway collections.
“As a creator and artist, there is no greater honor or privilege than to share my creativity with a wider audience,” Guo said in a statement to The Chronicle. “I am therefore honored and humbled that the prestigious Legion of Honor Museum will be presenting a retrospective of my work . ... I hope ... that through the artistry of couture and universal language of art that it will foster crosscultural appreciation, connections and ideas.”
Guo, 54, began her fashion house in China in 1997 after working for Chinese readytowear brands. Jill D’Alessandro, the curator in charge of costume and textile arts for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (which includes the de Young and Legion of Honor), is organizing the exhibition,
She says Guo’s work has long been a favorite of Chinese celebrities, including singer Song Zuying and actor Zhang Ziyi, and has been featured at national media events like New Year’s celebrations and the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.
“It’s a broad range of work with a really unique vision,” D’Alessandro says. “She utilizes exquisite craftsmanship and unconventional dressmaking techniques that are drawn from her Chinese heritage and traditional textiles. She combines this interest in world culture and European culture with being a true artisan.”
Many in the West were introduced to Guo’s work at the 2015 Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute Gala, when pop superstar Rihanna wore an elaborate golden beaded gown with yards of train surrounding her on the red carpet (the piece will not be part of the exhibition). A voluminous gold lamé gown by Guo was also among her pieces exhibited in the costume show “China: Through the Looking Glass” at the museum that same year. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco director and CEO Thomas Campbell was the director of the Metropolitan Museum at the time.
“We are particularly excited to present the groundbreaking work of Guo Pei, who fuses China’s imperial past with the present, using traditional embroidery techniques in her exquisite creations that transcend art and fashion,” Campbell said.
Campbell said that San Francisco, with its extensive Chinese heritage and setting on the Pacific Rim, is a “natural location to premiere the first major museum exhibition on Guo Pei’s work.”
In 2015, Guo also became the first bornandraised Asian designer to be invited to become a guest member of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture in Paris, the organization that governs the traditional French Haute Couture fashion weeks. In 2016, Time listed her as one of the World’s 100 Most Influential People.
Guo’s dedication to detail and craftsmanship is wellknown in the fashion industry. Collections can take more than two years to complete and can cost upward of $3 million. Gowns can cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes constructed with precious materials that include 24karat gold thread, pearls, phosphorescent fabric and crystals.
They can also weigh almost as much as the models that wear them.
The exhibition will consist of a series of gallery rooms on the Legion’s lower floor dedicated to themes in Guo’s collections, including architecture, embroidery, florals and fantasy creations. In the permanent decorative arts collections, Guo’s work will be placed in conversation with different objects and period room installations.
D’Alessandro says that for Guo, premiering this show in the United States in a time when the issue of violence against Asian Americans is at the forefront feels timely.
“She said, ‘I realized how important this exhibition is now because art brings us together. I want the beauty and joy of my work to bring us together.’ ”