Guo Pei: China's timeless haute couturier

For many people, the fashion world is a place where fame meets fortune. Tall, slim supermodels strut elegantly in clothes decorated in gold and silver; luxury goods are produced from this array of fancy attire and subsequently brought into the market, leading the trends of each season. Paris, the world’s fashion capital, has become the place to be for many aspiring designers.

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On the star-lit runways of Paris, a woman from Asia has caught the attention of many in this ever-changing industry. 

“I don’t want to design up-to-date fashion," said Guo Pei, one of China’s first-generation fashion designers and haute couturiers. "I refrain from defining the lifespan of anything with time.”

Haute couture is an artistic, personalized method of design that Guo believes outlives the lifespan of “trendy clothes.” She hopes to merge clothes, people and culture into one, to create the sort of fashion that can truly become part of people’s lives.

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Guo loves designing wedding gowns, believing that “a single wedding gown can be passed down for three generations.” Traditionally in China, a mother sews her daughter’s wedding gown. Each needle and thread carries the affection and prayers of a mother to her child.

In modern China, only a few wear traditional wedding gowns on their big day. However, today, more celebrities are appearing in public wearing Chinese-style wedding gowns designed by Guo, slowly making her and her traditional handicraft the new mainstream.

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Guo's studio is most famous for traditional embroidery. All her designs are handmade, stitch after stitch, by the studio’s embroiderers. Some pieces could take thousands of hours to complete. Authentic gold and silver threads and luxurious fabrics are used, and some of her designs weigh up to a few dozen pounds. Guo emphasizes the importance of the history and heritage of traditional clothes and craftsmanship, so she rarely uses modern technology in her fashion.

Pure handicraft like this is deemed to be valuable enough to pass down to the next few generations.

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Guo's designs focus on the aspect of culture. She finds inspiration not only in traditional Chinese culture, but also the cultural exchanges that have been going on for the past few centuries, culminating in the flowers and birds shown in her designs. That’s why, aside from traditional dragon, phoenix, flower and bird patterns, she also incorporates flowers and fruits from western regions into her designs.

In the “Courtyard” series, Guo incorporated patterns showing the flowers and plants that grow inside Chinese courtyards into Western-style gowns, creating a graceful combination of the classic and the modern. This series was the grand finale at the 2016 Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week. 

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Guo's pursuit of beauty and her design aesthetic have garnered the attention of the fashion industry. One of her most recognizable designs was featured on the red carpet at the 2015 Met Gala. Singer Rihanna attended the annual event draped in a yellow dress and dramatic, fur-lined cape designed by Guo. 

At her 2017 Paris fashion show “Legend,” 86-year-old supermodel Carmen Dell'Orefice, known as the world's oldest working supermodel, closed Guo's show in a blood-red gown. 

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The two also collaborated back in 2010 during her “One Thousand and Two Nights” show. Upon seeing her design, Carmen said: “Pure beauty like this has left me in awe.”

“Through handicraft, I want to convey a state of mind, a true aspiration,” said Guo, who sometimes embroiders her own designs. She believes that haute couture can help people rise above themselves to create better things, leaving memories for future generations.

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Perhaps, for her customers and audience, the beauty of her designs is indeed a path to eternity.

(Sina Fashion Photo)

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CGTN Photo

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are coasting toward the close of another winning week on Friday.

The S&P 500 was 0.1% higher in afternoon trading and on track for a third straight winning week following a mostly miserable April. It had been on pace for a bigger gain, but it mostly disappeared following a discouraging report on U.S. consumer sentiment released in the morning.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 115 points, or 0.3%, as of 12:58 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.1% lower.

The S&P 500 has returned to within 0.7% of its record on revived hopes that the Federal Reserve may deliver cuts to interest rates this year. A flood of stronger-than-expected reports on profits from big U.S. companies has also helped support the market.

Gen Digital jumped 14.7% after joining the parade and reporting better profit for the first three months of 2024 than analysts expected. The cyber safety company, whose brands include Norton and LifeLock, also authorized a program to buy back up to $3 billion of its stock. It joins a lengthening list of companies announcing big such programs, which helps goose per-share earnings for investors.

Novavax nearly doubled and shot 93% higher after announcing a deal with Sanofi that could be worth more than $1.2 billion. The agreement includes a license to co-commercialize Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine worldwide, with some exceptions. Novavax also reported a slightly smaller loss for the latest quarter than analysts expected.

They helped offset a drop of 9.5% for Akamai Technologies, which topped expectations for profit but fell short for revenue. The cloud-computing, security and content delivery company also lowered some of its financial forecast for the full year.

It said the strengthening of the U.S. dollar’s value against other currencies is slicing into its business, along with slowing traffic growth across the industry. That helped overshadow its own announcement of a program to buy back up to $2 billion of its stock.

In the bond market, Treasury yields rose following the discouraging preliminary report from the University of Michigan.

It suggested sentiment among U.S. consumers is weakening by much more than economists expected, and the drop was large enough to be “statistically significant and brings sentiment to its lowest reading in about six months,” according to Joanne Hsu, director of the survey of consumers.

Potentially even more discouraging is that U.S. consumers were forecasting inflation of 3.5% in the upcoming year, up from their forecast of 3.2% a month earlier. If such expectations spiral higher, the fear is that it could lead to a vicious cycle that worsens inflation.

It highlights how some companies have recently been describing increasing struggles among their customers, particularly their lower-income ones.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.50% from 4.46% late Thursday. But the movement was still relatively modest compared with its drop from 4.70% late last month.

Markets may remain on hold until Wednesday's highly anticipated update on U.S. inflation at the consumer level, according to rates strategists at Bank of America. Traders are still largely penciling in one or two cuts to interest rates by the Federal Reserve this year, according to data from CME Group.

Last week, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell helped pull yields lower after saying the central bank remains closer to cutting its main interest rate than hiking it despite a string of stubbornly high readings on inflation this year. The Fed has been keeping its main interest rate at the highest level in more than two decades in hopes of getting high inflation fully under control.

A cooler-than-expected jobs report at the end of last week, meanwhile, suggested the U.S. economy could pull off the tricky balancing act of staying solid enough to avoid a bad recession but not so strong that it worsens inflation.

In stock markets abroad, London’s FTSE 100 rose 0.6% after the government reported the U.K. economy bounced back to growth at the start of the year. The performance was better than expected, and it snapped two straight quarters where the economy shrank.

In Japan, Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 rose 0.4% after a report showed strong auto exports whittled down the nation’s trade deficit and it racked up solid returns on overseas investments.

AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed.

FILE - American flags hang from the front the New York Stock Exchange, right, on April 11, 2024 in New York. Global shares are trading higher on Friday, May 10, 2024, after a rally on Wall Street that pulled the S&P 500 back within 1% of its record. (AP Photo/Peter Morgan, File)

Currency traders pass by the screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), left, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at the foreign exchange dealing room of the KEB Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, May 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

A currency trader passes by the screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), left, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at the foreign exchange dealing room of the KEB Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, May 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

A currency trader works near the screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) at the foreign exchange dealing room of the KEB Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, May 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)