A Splashy Entrance by Rihanna Puts Chinese Designers in the Focus

When Rihanna used a fur-trimmed yellow satin gown by the Chinese-born designer Guo Pei to the Met Gala on Mon night, it became the talk of Twitter, which erupted with jokey comparisons to omelets and pizza. Memes using anime characters like SpongeBob SquarePants were wild. "The fashion world pretty much located a standstill, inch Glamour journal wrote of the "jaw-dropping" cloak, while Time journal declared that the singer took the show. Yet Pei isn't the first Chinese-born designer to manufacture a media meltdown with a spectacular design. The X-Men star Fan Bingbing used a bright yellow dragon prom dresses under 200 by Laurence Xu to the 2010 Cannes Film Festivity, and the The movies Press reporter wrote that it "launched her into the style stratosphere. inch "Sensational! inch the website Red Carpet Awards proclaimed. Clothing got so much attention, in fact, that the occasional actress Qin Hailu complained freely that Fan was using the Chiffon Sweetheart Floor Length A Line Prom Dress to cast herself as China's leading lady (a charge that Fan refused), and London's Victoria & Albert Museum ultimately snapped it up for its permanent collection. Now, that dress and two Guo Pei designs are the main Metropolitan Museum of Art's new Costume Institute exposure, "China: Through the Looking Glass. inch Juxtaposed against a dragon dress created by He Honda for Yves St . Laurent, Xu's gown highlights the different ways contemporary Chinese designers think of their aesthetic history, and demonstrates the approach of a new trend of Cookware inventors who are drawing attention and acclaim for work that is defined by a modern balance between East and Western side. Last year, for example, Yiqing Yin, the Chinese-born, Paris-based couturier who won the fashion designer of the year award at France's prestigious Globes de Cristal in April, was named artistic director of the French fashion house Léonard. And in 08, Qiu Hao won the International Woolmark Prize, thanks to the hand-woven fabrics he uses in his minimal, industrial looks. "With so many brands doing several things, and a country of 1. 3 thousand people, the Chinese designers need not adjust to us in the Western side, and we'll see this develop, inch said Gemma A. Williams, the writer of "Fashion China. inch "They will study from what we've done and put their own spin on it. inch Experience Boundless, designed by Zhang Da, gives classic padding, quilted garden applications a new spin by re-imagining them in luxury cottons, soft pinks and modern geometrics. Or Chictopia, designed by Christine Lau, whoever pop images are drawn personally rather than computer. Dooling Jiang of Process Design also uses a traditional approach, in her case ancient cutting techniques, to create conceptual pieces like a landscape-inspired shirt-and-cropped-trouser combo; minimal, draped jackets; or crinoline-esque paper-thin dresses. As the Qingdao-born, London-based designer Huishan Zhang said, there's more to Chinese design than dragons, phoenixes and the color red. "There is a really interesting feeling of these designers working with a blank record, and much more happy to take risks with their designs, inch Angelica Cheung, the editor-in-chief of Style China, wrote in an email. When the journal started, in 2005, she struggled to find local designers to fill her pages, but is now, according to her, completely overwhelmed. The 32-year-old Ban Xiaoxue, for example, is one of China's rising stars; he won the Cookware final of the 2012 International Woolmark Prize the same year he introduced his namesake label. Located in Guangzhou, he uses ancient adornments techniques to create modern floral and grid patterns on signature sailing, womanly pieces, and is known for his fabric experimentation.