In what has to be one of the most spectacular collisions of high fashion and architecture, fashion designer Guo Pei has tapped into the “immutable” qualities of Gothic buildings with a series of outfits inspired by vaults, spires, flying buttresses, and elaborate window tracery. According to Vogue, the Chinese designer described her work as “a dialogue between the human body and spatial dimension,” while Pei’s own Facebook post explained her Fall 2018 collection with just a short phrase: “Time flows unhurriedly, while architecture stands immutably.”
Pei’s interest in the architecture of cathedrals and churches seems a natural extension of the last design for which she made headlines, the bejeweled pope hat and dress that helped Rihanna “win” at the MET Gala in New York earlier this year. However, converting the rigid stone structures of the Gothic style into fabrics designed to hang from the human body is clearly a more challenging technical feat, and proves all the more satisfying for architecture-obsessed onlookers when achieved with the audacity brought to her work by Pei.
News via Vogue.