The Art of Fashion:
In Conversation with Guo Pei, Ikko Yokoyama, and Desiree Au

Details

Type: Talk

Language: Cantonese, English, Mandarin

Audience: Everyone

Location: Grand Stair

Accessibility:

The Art of Fashion:
In Conversation with Guo Pei, Ikko Yokoyama, and Desiree Au

As one of China’s first generation of fashion designers, Guo Pei has expressed her dream for beauty through her endeavour in couture art over the last three decades. She melds historic Chinese craftsmanship with diverse cultural inspirations and haute couture. Her garments are not merely wearable sculptures but mirrors that reflect the rapid economic development in China, the pursuit for material pleasure and technical heights, and the universal hunger for spectacle. The Special Exhibition Guo Pei: Fashioning Imagination pairs Guo’s pioneering vision with artworks in the M+ Collection that also speak to the same cosmopolitan modernist approaches and references in visual art and culture during the post-1980 period.

Join Guo Pei, M+ Lead Curator of Design and Architecture Ikko Yokoyama, and Vogue Hong Kong founding publisher Desiree Au for a discussion on the relationship between fashion, art, and design, and how through the development of the exhibition this relationship is explored.

The free talk will be conducted in English and Mandarin with simultaneous interpretation available in Cantonese, English, and Mandarin. The talk will also be livestreamed via this page and on Bilibili, Facebook, and Youtube.

About the Speakers

Guo Pei (b. 1967, Beijing) is a visionary haute couture artist who has changed the perception and imagination of Chinese high fashion. One of the country’s first generation of fashion designers in the reform and opening era, she founded China’s first couture atelier Rose Studio in 1997 and presented at Paris Haute Couture Week from 2016 to 2020. Her work has been featured in institutional exhibitions, including the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco (2022) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York(2015). Apart from her bespoke work with high-profile clients, Guo has also reimagined traditional Asian aesthetics for outfits for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics and collaborated with Mattel to create the 2023 Lunar New Year Barbie.

Portrait of Guo Pei. Photo: Hu Pengfei. Image courtesy of Production Avenue Ltd

Ikko Yokoyama is Lead Curator of Design and Architecture at M+. Before joining M+, she served as Head of Exhibitions at Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm. In parallel, Yokoyama is an independent curator and writer and has worked on international exhibitions and projects across Europe, South Africa, and Japan. She is an executive committee member of the ICAM International Confederation of Architectural Museums; advisory panel of CHAT Centre for Heritage Arts & Textiles in Hong Kong; committee member of the Design-DESIGN MUSEUM, Japan; expert committee member of the National Center for Art Research, Japan; and member of the expert advisor group of the Council for Cultural Affairs in the Agency of Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan.

Portrait of Ikko Yokoyama. Photo: Winnie Yeung @ Visual Voices

Desiree Au is the founding publisher of Vogue Hong Kong. A media veteran, she has held senior editorial positions at South China Morning Post and Hong Kong Standard, founded Time Out Hong Kong, and contributed articles to the international edition of the New York Times. She is an honorary trustee of the Women’s Foundation, a founding patron of M+, a board director of the Society of Publishers in Asia, and a trustee of Design Trust.