Too haute to handle

Designers make luxury with a Chinese twist

Guo Pei found out by accident how hard embroidery could be for her workers.

"I was in the workshop, watching one of our women doing some needlework. The thread snapped suddenly. While I waited for her to re-thread the needle, I heard a distinct sound - the sound of thread snapping - from the other side of me, and then another sound from right behind me. It seemed that, all around me, people were having a thread emergency," says the 48-year-old fashion designer. "'The thread breaks so easily,' I said to myself. One woman looked up from her work and said, 'It has always been this way. Don't you know?'

"That particular type of thread, for a custom-made piece, is made of 12-karat gold. It is imported from Japan, where fashion ateliers weave it into their silk brocade.

"While gold lends its splendor to fabric, its metallic nature also means the thread is very brittle.

"My embroiderers told me none of them could make more than seven stitches without the thread breaking. In other words, the more proficient the embroiderer, the more she needs to re-thread the needle. On average, an embroiderer needs to do so 300 times a day."

The designer, who wrapped Rihanna in an embroidered yellow satin cape, is no stranger to intricate handiwork. She is known for having made artisanship the cornerstone of her fashion atelier, Rose Studio.

"For millennia, China prided itself on a tradition of luxury, until that tradition became a political faux pas during the period of time between 1950s and 1970s," says Guo. "Now we are gradually picking up that lost golden thread.

"In the same way that kings, popes and the ruling families of Europe provided patronage to the leading artists and artisans of their day, rulers of successive Chinese feudal dynasties amassed and commissioned beautiful pieces, from painting and porcelain to carved jade.

"These works belong to a tradition of luxury and a bloodline to which I would like to consider myself the latest successor."

One of her creations, a gold lame evening gown that 100 embroiderers labored on for a month, commands a whole gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in a show called China: Through The Looking Glass. Among the show's 200 pieces of clothing are three from Chinese designers, including two from Guo.

However, Jiang Qiong'er, artistic director and CEO of Shang Xia, does not believe luxurious has to mean lustrous or visually aggressive, at least where the Chinese aesthetic is concerned.

Shang Xia, which has an affiliation with the French brand Hermes, is touted as China's first luxury brand.

"Spiritually, we don't belong to a royal tradition. Instead, we see ourselves as part of the country's scholarly tradition," says Jiang. "Think of a poet from ancient China - how passionate he was deep at heart, and how composed and cool he must have appeared on the surface.

"Our brand embraces these dual qualities. The designs speak the language of minimalism, but the hours devoted by our master craftsmen to a single piece of work enriches it, making it capable of arousing strong emotions from people."

Jiang says a contemporary luxury item must be judged against three things: raw material, handiwork and design. She points to a pair of red lacquer chairs auctioned by Christie's for 1.1 million yuan ($180,000; 163,000 euros) in October. "The chairs were constructed from carbon fiber, a material that combines sturdiness with ultra-lightness. You can lift it up with one finger, but the chair can sustain a weight of up to 250 kilograms.

"Still, these are lacquered chairs built on Chinese aesthetics and craftsmanship. The hand lacquering, which gives the chairs a silken shine, involves more than 40 stages of work," says Jiang, who studied design in China and in France. "The fusion of the traditional and the modern has in no way diminished the chair's 'Chineseness', or its inbuilt sense of luxury."

Jiang says the time taken on luxury items separates it from everyday items.

Christopher Bu, a fashion designer in Beijing, dressed actress Fan Bingbing when she walked the red carpet for the Met show in New York in May.

The giant cape, worn with a glistening golden gown, took its inspiration from the painted architecture of royal palaces in Beijing. "It took us five months to weave the 20 meters of fabrics we needed for the cape, experimenting constantly with the colors and suffering many failures in between," says Bu. "The embroidery and sequin work took us another month."

The effort did not go unnoticed: the dress received rave reviews from the world's media. "I've since been contacted by high-end department stores from Europe. They asked if I could do an entire collection. They want to introduce me to their Middle East clients."

Guo has her sights set on international auction houses. "In May Christie's will auction my designs. The event will include five designers. I'm the only one from China."

Last year, Christie's held its first auction of Chinese contemporary design. "They tried to collect items from many designers and brands. Ultimately, all the 20 or so pieces were from Shang Xia," says Jiang. "We were the only ones who met their standard."

Everything was sold, bringing in a total of 21.7 million yuan.

Jiang Yi, a fashion designer in Beijing who opened his boutique a decade ago, believes China's fashion and design set has to reconnect with tradition if it wants to assert itself on the world stage.

"The 'cultural revolution' (1966-76), which denounced everything that seemed to be associated with a bourgeois, not to mention luxurious, lifestyle, effectively severed the country from a part of its most prized past. Gone were some of its precious techniques and handicrafts, and also a more relaxed attitude that was at the core of a delicate, luxurious lifestyle."

While in Paris last year Guo Pei met with a high-level official from France's Chamber Syndicate de la Haute Couture. Guo is reluctant to reveal his name out of business concerns, but says she was inspired by the man's words. "The gentleman told me that to join their extremely exclusive circle, which currently has only 11 official members, including Chanel, Christian Dior and Givenchy, one has to meet three requirements," Guo says. "First, everything a designer makes must be the result of a labor of love. Second, artistically, a designer must be able to contribute to the chamber."

It was the third and last requirement that surprised Guo, leading her to re-evaluate what she had been doing for three decades.

"Top-level craftsmanship that's the final criteria. Before he uttered that phrase, I had been anticipating the word 'design'. 'Taken aback, I asked: Isn't design of ultimate importance to a designer?'"

"Then came his answer: There's no good or bad design, only designs that a person loves or hates. Craftsmanship is the sole criteria against which a designer could be fairly judged," says Guo, whose peers have criticized her creations for having more decorations than design.

"That was an epiphany for me. All the qualms, if I had ever had any, were gone."

Bu says: "Haute couture is not just a designation, it's a standard that speaks for itself. Today many high-end brands both Chinese and non-Chinese call themselves haute couture. But if you listen to the French, members of the Chamber Syndicate de la Haute Couture are the only ones legally entitled to use the term, because it's their invention that has long become the industry's benchmark."

Angelica Cheung, editor-in-chief of Vogue China, says joining the chamber is not the only way for Chinese designers to be recognized for their work.

"Haute couture is a French phrase. It's a French system with its own history. People in China often get things mixed up, thinking that all high-end customized and handmade fashion is haute couture. This is not true. In fact, the right to use the term is reserved solely for members of the chamber.

"But that doesn't mean that brands other than those few will be less than superb. Chinese designers should have cultural confidence they need not justify what they do by adopting a French concept. But if you want to join their private club, you would have to comply with their standards."

Guo says the rules and those who make them are more flexible than they seem. "The original rules stipulate that a member must have the clothes made in France. I told them I cannot, simply because French workers don't have the same skills I ask of my Chinese ones. Then they said to me: 'Maybe you could have the clothes almost done in China, before having the seams sewn in France.'"

Guo believes the ultimate value of her dress comes from the passion and strength of will that has gone into making it, and with the feel of love it can inspire in the person wearing it.

"A few years ago a mother came to our studio, asking me to make a traditional Chinese-style wedding gown for her daughter with all the 50,000 yuan in her bank account. She didn't look rich. I hesitated," Guo says. "After we sat down to talk, the woman, who worked at a local factory, told me that she had divorced her husband many years before, leaving her only daughter to the man."

"'Now my girl has grown up and is getting married. This gown is going to be my wedding gift to her, my way to say sorry and to express love,' I remember her telling me," says the designer. "So I took the money and immediately started work on the dress."

Six weeks later, the mother and the daughter turned up at Guo's Beijing studio for the unveiling of the dress - a red gown and matching red coat, both hand-embroidered with gold.

"The girl gasped. She put on the clothes and looked into the mirror, while her mother looked at her," Guo says. "Like the best of our tradition, that moment is something to keep at heart."

zhaoxu@chinadaily.com.cn