Poverty in Dresses. Guo Pei Couture Beyond

Vancouver Art Gallery exhibited Couture Beyond  from October 19 of 2018 until January 20 of 2019 showing couture dresses by the Chinese fashion designer Guo Pei. In the exhibition you can appreciate different kinds of dresses and a brief biography of Guo Pei. While she lived in traditional China her family and culture discouraged her from becoming a fashion designer. The main focus of the exhibition was to portray the dualism that Guo Pei had in a enviroment where her class and ideas where opressed by tradition and her social status.  She became the first Chinese designer to present a collection at Paris Haute Couture, which at that time was impossible to do.
 The dresses of Guo Pei represent high class in China and also some inspiration from fantasy stories like One Thousand and One Nights by different Arabian and Indian authors and Alice in  Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. The dresses are very classical or Victorian using long skirts, high heels, hats, rings and a lot of accessories to show beauty and class. Pei extravagant clothes mostly focus to portrait women as sacred deities. Pei explains that her dresses are more like sculptures instead of clothes. The dresses look like a stereotypical Disney gown but with more expensive accessories and materials such as silk, cotton, gold and precious stones. The gallery portraits Pei as a Chinese artist who fought against Chinese ideologies and culture to grow in the industry and history of fashion doing what she loves and like.

However, Pei works are beautiful they also shows another face. Instead of looking at how the gallery portrays Pei the exhibition demonstrate power and class. The jewels and the expensive accessories in most of her works make feel the gallery more as a private collection than an art exhibition. Making uncomfortable being near to the dresses or being a long time inside the gallery looking at the works. It is true that this dresses portrait beautifulness and fantasy but it also represent class. Being in an environment where you know every dress is extremely expensive it is impossible to do not think about poverty. Specially knowing that she comes from a low class family. The exhibition make you question and critique the work of Pei in a way that any point of view is correct and it makes the experience more delightful and to think about.

The gallery portrait Guo Pei as this artist who reach her dream to be a famous fashion designer ignoring Chinese cultural oppression and family discourage. The exhibition show beauty but at the same time poverty. So any opinion about Pei works is acceptable making the exhibition exciting and interesting to talk and discuss. Also you can learn history of traditional China and how it helped Pei to create her unique style.