Whenever visiting the Palace of the Legion of Honor Museum, I usually want to escape outside to the stunning beauty of Lincoln Park Municipal Golf Course which surrounds it. However, I'm still breaking in a new hip so I happily roamed the museum instead last Saturday for the opening of a new fashion exhibit by a Chinese coturier named Guo Pei.
While local socialite Dede Wilsey has been in charge of the Fine Arts Museums for the last few decades, there have been lots of jewelry and fashion exhibits which seems to be her thing. A few of the shows have been fabulous (the Jean-Paul Gaultier exhibit from Montreal at the deYoung, for instance) and quite a few have been sad embarrassments (the recent "Patrick Kelly: Runway of Love" at the deYoung being a prime example). So it's a joy to report that the Guo Pei exhibit is one of the most astonishing museum installations I have ever seen.
Guo Pei is a 53-year-old Beijing-based fashion designer who was "invited to be a member of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture, the chief governing body of the high-fashion industry, allowing her to show on the Paris Haute Couture Week calendar,"
according to her website.
The downstairs special exhibit is filled with amazing examples of her work from the last 20 years, but the physical space is crowded and a bit claustrophobic, not allowing the work to breathe properly.
However, somebody had the bright idea to install most of the showstoppers in the permanent galleries upstairs, and the proximity of the sculpturally magnificent outfits with the art surrounding them elevate both.
The detailing in these outfits is staggering, and her more elaborate creations require two years and 4,000 hours of labor from her 500-employee design studio, not to mention at least a medium-sized fortune to purchase.
In an interview with L'Officiel in Singapore, Guo Pei says: "I love couture art, as couture can have a longer, even permanent life. Unlike ready-to-wear, which could be very popular at a time, but be forgotten at another. I hope my couture can be like the museum pieces stored in galleries or museums, being inherited. Because true haute couture can be appreciated through time, for years, they become a glance of past time, where they can restore past glory and resplendence."
This is Guo Pei's first museum exhibit, so it looks like somebody's dreams have come true.
Many of these pieces don't look like they could actually be worn by normal humans, but their mixture of craft and sculptural experimentation put them into a different realm of art.
Some of the installations are witty and destabilizing.
The absurdly ornate French antiques rooms look much more interesting with exquisitely dressed mannequins inhabiting them.
And the erotics of antique French bedroom sets has never been so obvious.
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