Guo Pei: Fashioning Imagination
21 Sept 2024 –
6 Apr 2025
Guo Pei (b. 1967), China’s leading couture artist, combines Chinese cultural heritage with international elements and artistic expression. Guo’s astonishing runway collections have impressed fashion and art audiences alike for almost 30 years. Presenting the first major exhibition of Guo’s work produced in China, M+ will showcase Guo’s key collections and early designs, highlighting her unique career connecting China and the rest of the world and the cultural symbols created through her sophisticated and visually dazzling practice. Working with the couturier and her studio, the exhibition presents a selection of garments shown to audiences in the region for the first time, creating a layered dialogue with the M+ Collections around visual imagination and workmanship. The exhibition foregrounds Guo Pei’s unique artistic style that resonates with imperial Chinese dress etiquette, European royal fashion, architecture, and the botanical world. Fashioning Imagination features more than forty haute couture show pieces loaned from Guo’s atelier Rose Studio. They are placed in dialogue with works of art and design from the M+ Collections, creating a network of visual and thematic ideas across artistic practices and cultures. The exhibition will be held in the museum’s Main Hall Gallery with an additional presentation in the public area of the Main Hall on the museum’s ground floor.