GUO PEI: (Mandarin) How does an artist find inspiration? From your life, from your approach to life, passion for life, all of life’s experiences.

I was born and raised in Beijing. I studied in Beijing. When I was little, my maternal grandma always told me that in her youth, she could embroider butterflies and flowers onto clothes. What she told me became a goal I pursued in my career something I aimed to achieve. I began studying fashion design in 1982. It’s been 40 years. I’m a designer who’s particularly fond of traditional craft. Many say Guo Pei’s embroidery is top-notch. There’s no fast lane in craftsmanship. There are no shortcuts. Can it be mastered overnight? No. It has to accumulate over the course of your life and time. Like a painter’s mastery of paints, a musician’s mastery of notes. For me, my mastery of garment-making is no different from any artist’s mastery of their art. Craftsmanship is crucial. Without it, you can’t even express your ideas.

I founded Rose Studio in 1997. Having a company means I can hire embroiderers to put the patterns I want onto garments. I started out with one or two, then eight or 10, then a hundred. The most we had was close to 300. In the detail of my works, you can see our exploration of traditional culture and commitment to it, as well as our efforts to uphold the legacy allowing it to shine and foster creativity.

Many people have noted my works’ embodiment of Eastern and Western cultures. Many are curious. How do you integrate Eastern and Western cultures? Eastern culture is like my blood. It runs in me. It’s like my language. I often use it in my patterns, our palettes. It’s a manifestation of our traditional culture. Western culture sparks my curiosity. It attracts me, charms me into exploring it, into trying to understand it. I use my language to narrate what I’ve seen in the West. Hence, the integration happens naturally. I never make clear distinctions between the two.

Drawings offer a direction. But the creative use of materials in the process, the craftsmanship you have to make every detail speak for itself, then you have to bring all the details together in harmony and perfection. It requires decades of experience. I think haute couture is also contemporary art. It’s one manifestation of contemporary art. Contemporary art cannot be divorced from the times. Haute couture is a product of its time an artistic expression. As a fashion designer, I naturally hope to engage in dialogue with the world through my works to have mutual exchange with more people. The collections I created have names that call to mind musings on life enlightenments. I hope the details in my work will make people think. My career has spanned almost 40 years, I believe these works will bring the memories of contemporary humanity into the future.