Wes & Erica's Vacation Photo Album - San Francisco, CA (Legion of Honor Museum) - August 2022

I follow a bunch of designers on Instagram because I love fashion.👗 I am not a fashionable person and I'm not a consumer of anything in the high-end fashion world, but I do greatly enjoy looking at it. One of the designers I follow is Guo Pei. Earlier this year, she posted that several of her collections will be on display for a temporary exhibition called Fantasy Couture at the Legion of Honor Museum. Right then and there, I knew we'd be travelling to San Francisco to see it. 

The Legion of Honor Museum is modeled after its namesake in France. It is located in the center of Lincoln Park and is a gigantic museum!! I think we spent over three hours there. Luckily, we got in early because it got insanely busy around lunch time. We had planned to have lunch at the museum café, but the line was out the door and down the hallway. Its website stated that everyone was to purchase a timed ticket in advance, but I don't think they followed that rule because the museum felt like it was above capacity. 

Fair warning - I took at least one picture of every single dress that was on display, so this blog post will be 90% photo album---which you've probably already noticed. If you don't like dresses, turn back now! 👗 There were other works of art throughout the museum. Only the basement was dedicated to Fantasy Couture. A ton of paintings were housed on the main, second and (maybe) third floors -- I honestly don't remember how many floors it had. LOL 😅 But, there were MORE DRESSES scattered throughout the museum to accent the other artworks. I found it hard to appreciate the other pieces because my attention was immediately drawn to the gowns. 

One thing that I really appreciated about Guo Pei's dresses is that I understood them. I looked at the dress, then read the description with the artist's intent, and I could comprehend her vision. They weren't too pretentious, philosophical, or political. That's not to say that I thought her dresses were simple, because they definitely weren't. I don't like when designers are too artistic; their garments don't make sense, and the viewer won't "get it" unless they're as enlightened as the designer is. I also don't like the opposite of that when designers try to have an ultra-woke message, and it seems like they're just pandering. I felt neither of those intentions when I was at the Fantasy Couture exhibit.  

Another thing that I really liked about the exhibit is that the dresses looked like real wearable dresses. I like avant-garde stuff, too, but I want my clothes to mostly resemble regular silhouettes. Although I could never add all the intricate detailing and handiwork to any of my dresses, if I wanted to sew one that looked somewhat like what I saw at the museum, I probably could find a pattern for it.

The more labor intensive dresses had labels that showed how many hours it took to make each dress. Some were up into the tens of thousands of hours!! The labels also showed the materials used. Guo Pei worked mostly with silk and exclusively Swarovski crystals. 

My favorite of her collections is Garden of the Soul. I loved the vibrant colors of the floral motifs. Each dress had so much detail. 😍 There was the dress itself, but if you looked underneath the skirt or inside the sleeves, there would be more crystals and flowers!! I also liked the wigs. Shoes and accessories were an important part of each of her ensembles. One of the placards stated that she liked dressing women in insane shoes with impossible heels to show off how strong her women (models) are. 

My second favorite of her collections is Alternate Universe. Her pieces imagined a world where the animals took over and she advised us to be gentle to all creatures because we never know what will happen after reincarnation. I was astounded by the dresses at the exhibit so I watched the runway show for this collection when I got home. I wasn't as impressed with them when they walked. I think it is because I didn't see all the details and the dresses mostly looked heavy and static on the runway. On the other hand, a collection that wasn't a favorite of mine at the museum, Elysium, walked magnificently down the runway at its show.

One of the dresses had several dolls/puppets sewn in. Each one of her ateliers made one to add to the dress. I thought that was a nice gesture since so many of her dresses are done by hand. I was completely mesmerized by the detailing in her designs. So much so that I was doing the "you're in someone's way so you move left and they move left, and the dance continues for a while" thing without knowing it. The woman who's way I was in glared at me and said some nasty remark before I noticed I was in her way. 😬 LOL I was just trying to get to the next dress! 

Wes's favorite collection is Himalaya. It was a summer collection but the fabric made me think of winter. I guess the colors were summer. Wes said it would be too obvious as a winter collection. The dresses were made from old Japanese silk scarves. She noticed the strange patterns that the embroidery made on the back of the scarf so she used inside-out scarves in her designs. 

I don't remember the name of it, but she had a collection inspired by nighttime in Paris. It was so shocking to see the black dresses. 😮 Everything up until then was either gold or colorful. The back of one of the gowns had a silhouetted scene (like a shadow puppet show) embroidered onto it. It is the bottom right picture in the collage below.

I love everything about the pants in the bottom row of the above picture. 😍 I actually majorly adore both of the outfits on the bottom row. It's weird looking at my pictures again as I type this because I was in a daze the entire time at the museum; I don't even remember taking some of the pictures. It felt like a dream being surrounded by all of the dresses.

I felt so alive and inspired while walking through this exhibit. I told myself that after this experience, I would learn how to sketch (a very far fetched idea ... a toddler draws better than I do, but you get crazy thoughts while you're immersed in something you love, right?) so I could start designing some of my own dresses. As of now, 2 months after our vacation, I haven't drawn a single thing, haven't designed a pattern, and have only sewn a few subpar dresses. 😕 I need to get my motivation back in order!! Wes bought the gallery art book for me -- best souvenir ever but a encyclopedia-sized book is NOT the best gift when you're travelling with only carry-on luggage -- so I probably just need to look through it again to get my brain going.

The last collection in the exhibit was one that she dedicated to her youngest daughter. She designed it while pregnant, and imagined what her daughter would do if her Barbie's came to life. Her models (above) dress a zillion times nicer than my Barbie's ever did! 

After floating through the Fantasy Couture exhibit, we still had time to see the rest of the museum. I took a picture of each painting that I noticed a dog in. There was a mummy on display, which was cool. I really like mummies and artifacts.

We went to the museum on a Thursday and flew out early Friday morning. I still had visions of dresses dancing through my head when I noticed a tiny fashion exhibit at the San Francisco airport! It showed fabric and dresses made from pineapple leaves. Apparently, artists use the hairs on the leaves to weave fabric. How amazing!! 🍍 I am so glad that I got to see the Fantasy Couture exhibit. It is the third fashion exhibit I've seen and I think it is my favorite so far!