This Article is From May 09, 2015

A Splashy Entrance by Rihanna Puts Chinese Designers in the Spotlight

A Splashy Entrance by Rihanna Puts Chinese Designers in the Spotlight

Rihanna at the Met Gala red carpet. (Image courtesy: AFP)

New York: When Rihanna wore a fur-trimmed yellow satin gown by the Chinese-born designer Guo Pei to the Met Gala on Monday night, it became the talk of Twitter, which erupted with jokey comparisons to omelets and pizzas. Memes using cartoon characters like SpongeBob SquarePants were rampant. "The fashion world pretty much came to a standstill," Glamour magazine wrote of the "jaw-dropping" cloak, while Time magazine declared that the singer stole the show.

Yet Pei isn't the first Chinese-born designer to create a media meltdown with a spectacular design. The X-Men star Fan Bingbing wore a bright yellow dragon dress by Laurence Xu to the 2010 Cannes Film Festival, and The Hollywood Reporter wrote that it "launched her into the style stratosphere." "Sensational!" the website Red Carpet Awards proclaimed.

The dress got so much attention, in fact, that the actress Qin Hailu complained publicly that Fan was using the dress to cast herself as China's leading lady (a charge that Fan denied), and London's Victoria & Albert Museum ultimately snapped it up for its permanent collection. Now, that dress and two Guo Pei designs are part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's new Costume Institute exhibition, "China: Through the Looking Glass."

Juxtaposed against a dragon dress made by Tom Ford for Yves Saint Laurent, Xu's gown highlights the different ways contemporary Chinese designers interpret their aesthetic history, and reflects the approach of a new wave of Asian creators who are drawing attention and acclaim for work that is defined by a modern balance between East and West.

Last year, for example, Yiqing Yin, the Chinese-born, Paris-based couturier who won the fashion designer of the year award at France's prestigious Globes de Cristal in April, was named artistic director of the French fashion house Léonard. And in 2008, Qiu Hao won the International Woolmark Prize, thanks to the hand-woven fabrics he uses in his minimalist, architectural looks.

"With so many brands doing so many different things, and a country of 1.3 billion people, the Chinese designers don't have to adapt to us in the West, and we'll see this develop," said Gemma A. Williams, the author of "Fashion China." "They will learn from what we've done and put their own spin on it."

Witness Boundless, designed by Zhang Da, which gives classic padded, quilted agricultural coats a new spin by re-imagining them in luxury cottons, soft pinks and modern geometrics. Or Chictopia, designed by Christine Lau, whose pop prints are drawn by hand rather than computer. Dooling Jiang of Digest Design also uses a traditional approach, in her case ancient cutting techniques, to create conceptual pieces like a landscape-inspired shirt-and-cropped-trouser combo; minimalist, wrapped jackets; or crinoline-esque paper-thin dresses.

As the Qingdao-born, London-based designer Huishan Zhang said, there's more to Chinese design than dragons, phoenixes and the color red.

"There is a really interesting feeling of these designers working with a blank slate, and much more willing to take risks with their designs," Angelica Cheung, the editor-in-chief of Vogue China, wrote in an email. When the magazine started, in 2005, she struggled to find local designers to fill her pages, but is now, according to her, completely overwhelmed.

The 32-year-old Ban Xiaoxue, for example, is one of China's rising stars; he won the Asian final of the 2012 International Woolmark Prize the same year he introduced his namesake label.

Based in Guangzhou, he uses ancient embroidery techniques to create modern floral and grid patterns on signature floating, feminine pieces, and is known for his fabric experimentation.

Then there is the philosophical approach of Evening, designed by the Beijing-based Yu Wanning, whose last collection, full of sculpted wool jackets with fur sleeves, cropped chunky knits, and long sheer skirts, was inspired by wu qin xi, a traditional form of exercise that uses the movement of animals to balance the body and mind. Not to mention the mix of classic Mandarin collars on sheer embroidered tops with cutout shoulders by Liu Min, 34, who trained at Viktor & Rolf; she also designs organza sweatshirts traced by rubber calligraphy.

Chinese street-style stars like Leaf Greener, a stylist, blogger and former senior fashion editor of Elle China, are helping bring these Chinese designers to a broader audience, whether on Facebook and Instagram or on Chinese microblogging sites like Weibo and WeChat.
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