POPSUGAR: Your craftsmanship is undeniable. Your work could better be described as art worthy of being displayed at a museum. How do you define couture?
Guo Pei: I feel that couture shouldn't just be clothing. It's an artistic expression. When I design clothing, I always think about how to express our humanity and spirit instead of showing the exterior only. I believe beauty is the highest point of humanity and art is a way for people to express their dreams. I hope that people, when they look at the exhibition, they're not only thinking, "How would this particular piece of design fit on my body?" But think of how they want to use my love and language, which is design, to narrate their understanding and cognition of the world. I hope it can incite people's emotions.
Authors, when they first start to write, they use words and in time those words became a way to exchange their thoughts in life. We have poetry, for example, and these are all artistic language for people to express their thoughts and ideas. Clothing, I believe, can do the same thing. Ready-to-wear shows the exterior beauty, but couture is different. It looks inward.
