Director: Pietra Brettkelly
Screenwriter: Pietra Brettkelly
Cast: Guo Pei, Philip Treacy, Wendi Murdoch, Godfrey Deeny
Guo Pei has been designing in China for more than three decades, but the western audience may only know her as the woman who created the stunning garment Rihanna wore when she owned the 2015 China: Through the Looking Glass Met Gala red carpet. In Yellow is Forbidden, Pietra Brettkelly follows the designer after that time as she moves through every detail to become an invited member of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture – a society so exclusive only twenty-one members currently exist today. In this documentary, Brettkelly intended to tell the story of loss through the decline of haute couture, but the more powerful storyline that is quietly unearthed is the duality that exists within the designer’s world.
When the documentary opens you instantly fall for the Guo Pei’s jovial nature as she shares her collection of teddy bears and becomes completely enamored by the images reflected in her kaleidoscope. But, throughout the documentary, we are confronted by her constant, and sometimes unrealistic, need for perfection. For instance, she tells her wealthy clients that her embroiderers have to rethread delicate six-carat gold thread nearly three hundred times a day while unflinchingly commanding £110,000 for a single frock. Yet, she expects these same laborers, who bike to work in a less than glamorous part of town, to finish these elaborate pieces faster. Similarly, she hires thin models for her runway shows but becomes visibly disappointed when they cautiously walk the runway under the weight of her heavy looks. During casting, she even expressed that some models would be more beautiful if they were paler, which is one of the documentaries greatest dichotomies. As a Chinese designer who respects the great fashion institution and wishes to expand her reach, it is understandable why she is going through such great lengths to be admitted into the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture. But when you hear her views about pale skin and see her clients huddling together to share procedures to make themselves “more beautiful,” it’s hard not to wonder if she is also bending to the ever-dominating standards of beauty set forth by Europeans. Perhaps that is why milliner Philip Treacy advised her not to go “commercial” and to be “wilder” and “more Chinese.”
Whether Pietra Brettkelly, was trying to thinly veil some of these undertones is unclear, but what can’t be denied is the beauty in which this portrait was captured. Shot through the glass of a dismantled antique chandelier and set to the beautiful music composed by Tom Third, the documentary could easily stand alongside other films in this genre like Dior & I and The First Monday in May.
To moviegoers who aren’t besotted by the highest form of fashion, the idea that “couture is more than a piece of clothing. It’s an expression. It’s art” might not send them running to the box office. But if they take a moment to look under the skirt of the main storyline, they may appreciate the complexity that is attributed to becoming highly recognized within an industry – and that’s worth exploring.
Yellow is Forbidden was reviewed at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival.
-James Bianca