Yirantian Guo started dancing when she was four years old. For spring, she returned to her early passion for the art form. “I called it ‘clap!’” she said with a laugh, explaining that her muse was the Spanish Roma flamenco dancer Carmen Amaya, who, according to her research, was the first woman to wear a men’s suit to dance. “I thought this was an interesting point to start the collection,” Guo said. “It’s similar to the way I create the female figure.”
Unlike many of her counterparts on the Shanghai Fashion Week calendar, Guo is concerned with dressing a more mature customer rather than pursuing a perpetually ‘young’ it-girl. It makes her approach to elegance and sex appeal less dependent on trends and cool and more grounded in confidence and sophistication. This made Amaya a worthy starting point. The artist is often regarded as the greatest flamenco dancer in history, and is credited with ushering in a new chapter in the history of the early to mid-20th century, bringing flamenco from Spain to Latin America and the United States. States, and eventually Hollywood.
Guo modeled trousers after her, trimmed with springy ruffles at the side seams or at the hems. She placed the same fringes on modest blouses and sheer skirts with high and low hems that caressed the floor, then flew away as her models gained momentum. Particularly clever were the larger ruffles that ran along the necklines and hips of shorter dresses, and the double ruffles that turned into charming bubble hems on pencil skirts. Pale pink shorts were a standout, but they were Guo’s most faithful and modern interpretation of Amaya in this collection.
Where the show really found its rhythm was a pair of loosely draped halter blouses, lush knitted tanks and flowing trousers and skirts cut in expressive light silk: they best conveyed the elusive yet familiar fluidity of dance and the way music moves through the music moves. someone’s body. “The wave of the body is a language,” Guo said.