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China Fashion Week: Chinese Couture by Guo Pei

Turns out there is at least one genuinely great designer in China, a Chinese couturier by the name of Guo Pei, who wowed a packed out audience of 1,500 in Beijing on Thursday, November 16th, the first full day of China Fashion Week.

Guo Pei, a 39-year-old native of Beijing, is famed for dressing local actresses and singers, a score of who sat front row in the Conference Hall of the China World Hotel.

Grand crinolines in Montblanc ice and beige hues, ragged chiffon cocktail dresses with 15-foot trains and columns in shards of sequin-bedecked crystal. It was all rather phantasmagorical but beautiful nonetheless.

There were hints of Galliano and McQueen, but Guo Pei very much does her own thing, from the traditional wooden heeled shoes that morphed into red carpet platforms to the exquisitely finished Chinoserie beading and embroidering. Think Salvatore Dali gets to direct a remake of Sofia Coppola’s royalist apologia Marie Antoinette.

Guo Pei can also cut a mean suit – a series of midnight blue jackets and boleros with sky blue embroidery and extended chiffon fringes showed she is a great tailor.

Guo Pei first gained attention as chief designer of Tianma (Heavenly Horse) Clothing Company, one of China's most popular women’s labels of the early Nineties. She established her own company in Meiguifang (Mayflower) in 1996 and has since been regarded as one of China's top designers.

A great soundtrack helped Thursday’s show. It opened with huge drums – they love ‘em in China – and reached a crescendo with Bjork emoting in Icelandic.

Moreover, one of the biggest problems with runway shows outside of the western capitals is that the hair and makeup is generally dire. Not this evening in Beijing, where a casting of great femme fatale models strutted their stuff in brown lipstick, dark eye-shadow and some fantastic hair extensions – rock 'n roll Lady Macbeths.

One poor mannequin did suffer a major tumble, but that only added to tension at the finale when a deranged rocker chic mimed to La Vie en Rose.

Everything about this show was impressive, except maybe the audience. At most, 30 seconds of tepid applause greeted the designer when she took her bow. In Paris or New York she would have got a two-minute standing ovation, and merited every clap.

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