Great leap forward

Guo Pei - Fall/Winter 2010/2011

China is known for clothes you wear one day, then salvage the scraps to keep your pet warm the next. So a Beijing couturier who regularly goes overbudget to chase her flights of fancy? Refreshing. Guo Pei makes the giant leap forward from proletarian drab garb to dresses  with elaborate beading and embroidery. Pei’s porcelain dress take its folds from origami and its proportions out of a house of mirrors.  From over-to-top to over everyone’s tops, the high heels of mid-sixteenth century Europe inspired Pei’s shoes. They make you thirty inches taller so others, having to look so far up, can’t make out your grimace. From footbinding to stilts, trying to make the few women in China easier to pursue?

Soaring heights also describe the new generation of Chinese artists who strive to one up their genre’s previous bests and China gives them the resources to pull it. Off. Migrant workers erected architectural wonders. Strict discipline synchronized thousands of performers. Cheaper craftsmen free money to put more details in clothes. While Chinese art is running ahead, people to appreciate it hasn’t caught up.

The wealth of China’s nouveau riche is still new enough they prefer designer names to show they could afford something everyone knows is expensive. However to support homegrown talent isn’t to care how much their wares cost but to recognize how much they’re truly worth. Eventually the Chinese will also grow out of their inferiority complex to realize their countrymen is capable of top notch craftsmanship too. Then Pei stands to receive more than lukewarm applause at the end of her fashion shows.