Rihanna wearing a gown and train designed by Chinese couturier Guo Pei to the 2015 Met Gala. Photo / Getty Images
The world-famous “omelette dress” Rihanna wore to the Met Gala will spend this summer in Auckland.
Twenty-five kilograms of haute couture history - a floor-length gown with a spectacularly heavy yellow fur-trimmed circular train - is among 65 ensembles by Chinese fashion designer Guo Pei going on show at Auckland Art Gallery.
Exhibition details (including its title and ticket prices) are still being finalised, but the news it would include the Rihanna dress was revealed in an Auckland Council organisation’s meeting minutes.
Kirsten Lacy, Auckland Art Gallery director, confirmed the Guo Pei exhibition to the Weekend Herald. Opening December 9, she said it would run for at least four months.
“Why Guo Pei? She eclipses any haute couture designer globally by 40 times in terms of her client base. She is the biggest designer globally by a long stretch, but has not had a major exhibition in our part of the world.
“She is extraordinary. She lives in her imagination, but has the capital and funds behind her to invest in her most wildest creations.”
Lavish embroidery, beading and crystal embellishments feature in Pei’s creations. One of the gowns destined for the Auckland show, “Da Jin (Magnificent Gold)”, took two years to complete. It is entirely covered in gold thread and was reportedly inspired by clothes worn during the Napoleonic wars and the idea of rebirth.
The dress worn by Rihanna has been immortalised in multiple “iconic” lists. Elle magazine has named it one of the 20th and 21st centuries’ most important gowns, alongside three British royal wedding dresses (and one Princess Diana “revenge dress”), Bjork’s swan frock and Elizabeth Hurley’s safety pin dress.
Beijing-born Guo Pei, 57, launched her first label in 1997. Well-known in China (where commissions included designs for the 2008 Summer Olympics), she has said she didn’t know who Rihanna was before the singer’s team made contact about a yellow dress spotted while researching the Met Gala’s 2015 theme “China: Through the Looking Glass”.
The yellow dress weighed 25kg and required an entourage of three people to manage the New York red carpet appearance that launched a thousand memes (some social media users likened it to an omelette; others superimposed pizza imagery on the circular train). It catapulted Pei onto the western fashion stage - a moment in time captured in New Zealand filmmaker Pietra Brettkelly’s documentary, Yellow Is Forbidden.
Lacy believes that New Zealand connection helped Auckland Art Gallery get its exhibition proposal across the line.
“It’s very competitive and she is very sought after ... She said ‘no’ for about a year really. She did have a studio in Paris, but she was in Beijing, and they were in lockdown and it just felt too difficult to get the works out ... "
When the gallery team learned about the Guo Pei: Couture Fantasy exhibition at San Francisco’s Legion of Honour museum (which featured 80 gowns and attracted a record attendance) it renewed negotiations with the couturier’s Rose Studio.
“We have such a large Chinese population in Auckland and New Zealand and I really have been looking for some time for a project from out of China that would connect with and reflect those audiences.”
Lacy also hoped it would attract people who might not otherwise visit the gallery.
“Fashion in an art gallery isn’t anything new, but perhaps it hasn’t been done with great frequency here. It’s really just about making sure we are covering the full gamut and diversity of art making and creativity.
“Creating a blockbuster is very difficult in New Zealand, because we just haven’t got the same gallery-going audience or population of other big cities ... but the works are unbelievable.”
Margaret Young-Sánchez, Auckland Art Gallery’s in-house curator for the show, says each of the 65 ensembles destined for Auckland includes specially designed shoes and some come with headpieces, necklaces and bracelets.
“We are not talking about simple sheath dresses!”
The garments will be air-freighted from China and while most will be displayed in a ticketed exhibition on the gallery’s first floor, a small number will be able to be viewed for free in the historic Mackelvie Gallery space.