“If I use the words haute couture the French will blacklist me for life; they own this official stamp of recognition,” she says. “No matter how famous you are in China, in Paris you start from zero… Though China is rich in culture, they’re prejudiced against us because we’re from the East.”
Brettkelly followed Pei for two years while she was preparing for her spring/summer 2017 show at the La Conciergerie in Paris. The idea to profile Pei came to Brettkelly while sitting on her sofa eating custard. She had just finished Flickering Truth, which saw her spend two and a half years in Afghanistan following Afghan cinephiles trying to retrieve more than 8,000 hours of film footage they concealed during the Taliban era. She was flicking through her folder of creative inspiration in search for her next project and found a note about Pei’s ornately carved shoes. She booked flights to China with her cinematographer, Jacob Bryant, and went to track down Pei just days later.
“I’m really interested in other people’s isolation,” the New Zealand-born director tells Vogue of what captured her imagination in Pei’s story: “Isolation can bring out some extraordinary things, because there’s a purity of vision. Guo Pei doesn’t have all the inspirations of the West, but she strives for acceptance there. She treads the line between assimilation and acceptance.”
The film footage dips between the daily minutiae and intensive labour behind Pei’s creations, and the wider challenges she faces as a Chinese designer determined to uphold her heritage, while running a modern, lucrative business. “Being the first woman to represent China in the world of couture weighs really heavily on her,” Brettkelly says of the moment in Yellow Is Forbidden, where Pei tells fashion students, “I am not a nation. I am just me.”
Guo Pei, the house, was born during the Cultural Revolution in China and took off after she became the go-to designer for wealthy wives of leaders in the Communist Party. It’s her 500 private clients in Asia that fund Guo Pei, the artist - her real passion. Her catwalk shows can cost upwards of $3 million dollars to stage - because of the dramatic pieces made from 24-karat gold thread, phosphorescent fabric and delicate crystals - a sum that equates to some 2,000 demi-couture dresses in her day-to-day business. The annual extravaganzas involve models negotiating a 100-metre runway (normal catwalks are around 20 metres) wearing gowns with trains heavier than themselves. “Her drive is to show how extraordinary women are by putting them in difficult clothes, shoes and headpieces. For her, it is an example of how remarkable women are: the more we take on, the greater we become.”
These couture collections, which are never sold but stored as art, are rooted in the stories of the Chinese court that her grandmother would whisper in her ear at bedtime. “The tales of gowns worn by empresses all whirr inside Guo Pei’s mind in a way that is so different from Western designers. With 5,000 years of Chinese history behind her, Guo Pei’s inspirations come out in designs which are like nobody else’s,” Brettkelly says of watching her work.
Recognition for Pei came thick and fast in Western culture after the 2015 Met Gala, when Rihanna stepped onto the world’s stage in a Guo Pei yellow, fur-lined cape with a 16ft train. Tens of memes of the pop star were spawned: Rihanna the omelette! Rihanna the pizza slice! Oh how the internet feasted. The irony was that Pei didn’t know who Rihanna was before her team called to ask to borrow a look befitting the China: Through the Looking Glass theme. “Even if she wanted to buy the dress, I wouldn’t sell it. Only if I think the spirit of the celebrity matches the beauty of the dress [do I sell it],” Pei explains on-screen.
Though Rihanna spurred Pei on to present her work to international press in Paris, the designer minimises celebrity exposure and prefers to invite her VIP clients to sit on the front row at her shows. While shooting the documentary, Pei received calls from Beyoncé and Lady Gaga’s management teams, but, just like Rihanna, she had not heard of the global pop phenomena.
If this seems insular, it's not for lack of ambition. The film’s title refers to her mother's belief that “nobody should wear yellow”, because it the colour of Chinese emperors. Her mother, who is visually impaired and has not been to any of her daughter’s shows, has no idea that Pei’s work does indeed incorporate much yellow, nor that her art is worn by a modern-day style icon at fashion's equivalent of the Oscars.
"It's a gorgeous moment because the viewer know's Guo Pei’s secret," Brettkelly says. A moment indicative of Pei as a Chinese designer breaking the international scene - and finally being accepted by the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture - but doing it her way.
If this seems insular, it's not for lack of ambition. The film’s title refers to her mother's belief that “nobody should wear yellow”, because it the colour of Chinese emperors. Her mother, who is visually impaired and has not been to any of her daughter’s shows, has no idea that Pei’s work does indeed incorporate much yellow, nor that her art is worn by a modern-day style icon at fashion's equivalent of the Oscars.
"It's a gorgeous moment because the viewer know's Guo Pei’s secret," Brettkelly says. A moment indicative of Pei as a Chinese designer breaking the international scene - and finally being accepted by the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture - but doing it her way.
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