“Clothes occurs to be structure of the frame,” Guo Pei‘s quote reads on a wall of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, the place 80 of her attire are on show till November. The “Guo Pei: Couture Myth” exhibition unfolds like poetry; only a fast walkthrough will grip audience along with her degree of artistry. To explain Pei merely as a manner dressmaker falls wanting taking pictures the grandeur and technical prowess of her paintings. Borrowing freely from a multiplicity of assets — be it China’s imperial previous or the wildlife or Eu structure — Pei creates exquisitely crafted clothes that intersect with style, efficiency artwork, and sculpture. And a few of her items — just like the Da Jin get dressed on view on the show off — take tens of hundreds of hours to execute.

“I am very fortunate that I am destined to make clothes,” she tells POPSUGAR. Pei’s adventure to changing into the second one Chinese language dressmaker invited as a visitor member of the Chambre Syndicale de los angeles Haute Couture (the French authority for couture) has been outstanding. Born in Beijing, she evolved an early hobby for embroidered clothes via her maternal grandmother, who advised tales about her upbringing throughout China’s ultimate imperial generation. She spoke of richly embroidered Chinese language courtroom attire, which contrasted with what Pei used to be seeing again then, as embroidered clothes used to be forbidden throughout the Cultural Revolution. “On the time, there used to be no colour in clothes, the whole thing used to be undeniable,” Pei says. Her fascination with gorgeous garments deepened when she started stitching along with her mom, whose glaucoma made it inconceivable for her to proceed making garments for the circle of relatives.

Pei later enrolled in China’s first-ever style program and spent a decade running at name-brand corporations. Nonetheless, she longed to create embroidered clothes, so she ultimately got down to revive the artwork on her personal. Because it used to be not taught to women by way of the Thirties, she traveled to other villages to supply artisans, ultimately launching her personal observe, Rose Studio, in 1997. Lately, it employs 450 craftspeople, 300 of whom are embroiderers.

Many know her because the author of Rihanna’s gold embroidered robe on the 2015 Met Gala, however Pei used to be an acclaimed dressmaker lengthy ahead of that second. The couture dressmaker has effectively parlayed a love of fable, structure, and spirituality into an illustrious occupation, marked by way of her technical innovation and international standpoint.

Pei’s neatly of inspiration nonetheless hasn’t run out. The mythical dressmaker speaks to POPSUGAR about her adolescence, the evolution of favor in China, and her hopes for the way forward for the business. Learn forward for the total interview, frivolously edited for readability.