Gong Li and Fan Bingbing make the rounds during Paris Fashion Week

Fan Bingbing and Gong Li were all over the place during the closing days of Paris Fashion Week, the final stop on this season's imperial march of shameless hype, wretched excess and ceaseless self-promotion. Since both are representatives of Louis Vuitton they bumped into each other (or at least were photographed together) quite often.

Just another day at the office for Louis Vuitton CEO Yves Carcelle.

Gong Li with her trademark smile, Fan Bingbing looking perfect, English model Daisy Lowe with a 1,000 yard stare.

Gong Li in her element snuggling up to uber-designer Marc Jacobs with Yves Carcelle in attendance and a hulking bodyguard just behind them.

Almost a great dress for Fan Bingbing, marred by the unfortunate lace panel which was made necessary (I assume) when someone realized that the split on the skirt started a few inches below her waist. Perfect for the runway but not for the street so a quick alteration was needed. She seems to have gotten instrutions not to smile ever during Paris Fashion Week and followed them perfectly.

Gong Li strikes a pose for the cameras on this side of the scrum.

Fan Bingbing does the same.

Gong Li and Yves Carcelle on a power stroll very familiar to both of them.

Lovely outfit: Cut like a tuxedo jacket with satin lapels over a lacy top and her best accessory, that million dollar smile.

Fan Bingbing look as good as one can in this riot in beige by Elie Saab. Jeweled turban, lacy cape, perfectly cut and draped dress with an asymmetrical waist, all in a color guaranteed to fade into any background.

 And one more: Gong Li hangs on to Yves Carcell and Daisy Lowe while ultra-hip leather clad architect Peter Marino (BFF of Maggie Cheung) gets a quick nap beneath the visor of his cap.

Images from FashionWindows and Sina

This just in: Gong Li borrows Shakira wig from 2006, has picture taken.

From yesterday's opening of The 25th Biennale des Antiquaires in Paris, first of the the autumn season of European fine art and antiques fairs (WSJ) where you can "completely satisfy an escapist fantasy of a life lived in luxury" (NYT), Gong Li accompanied, as if often the case in when she is in Europe, by Yves Carcelle, CEO of Louis Vuitton. New hairstyle--or at least unfamiliar to me hairstyle, amazing ballgown, slightly pornographic necklace with a strategically placed ruby. A great look. From Zimbio. I hope there are a few more images of Gong Li in this outfit floating around.

John Cusack and Gong Li are hyping "Shanghai" which is finally opening after many long delays. They were at a press conference and then the premier yesterday. Hilarity ensued.

Before things got rolling:

Cusack planting a kiss on Gong Li's sleeve, recreating a scene from the movie (or at least from the trailer) while avoiding any hint of scandalous behavior:

The presser gets underway with Gong Li answers questions wearing an outfit that looks like nothing more than an oversize sweater thrown over a satin slip; Cusack does the movie star cool look while the translator asks herself if this is really what she was looking for when she spent three years in grad school:

There might be a joke that John Cusack is not in on:

Here Cusack thinks he is saying "Goodbye everyone, thanks for coming" in Mandarin while Gong Li breaks up and the translator tries to make herself invisible:

Three shots of Gong Li doing what has made her successful and wealthy--looking like Gong Li:

From the premier where everything was a bit more formal. This is why the mermaid silhouette dress remains popular:

From xinhuanet

Gong Li gets promoted

Gong Li moves up from knight to commander--you read it here second. Dennis Lee points to an article in CRIEnglish on the news that Gong Li, named in 2008 as a Knight of the French Legion of Honor is now a Commander. She was presented with the medal that is the insignia of her new rank at the French Pavilion of the Shanghai World Expo 2010. A tip of the Favorite Actresses cap to correspondent V Guerrero who emailed us yesterday with the news.

Pictures of the honoree with her medal from CRIEnglish:

It is difficult to imagine a more approriate resting place for an emblem of an honor from the French Republic:

On April 30 Gong Li and Alain Delon showed each other around the French Pavilion each looking excrutiatingly glamorous:

They know how to draw a crowd and how to deal with a crowd when it arrive.

Gong Li cuts a ribbon.

Gong Li was in Shanghai the other day to open the Louis Vuitton flagship store on Huai Hai Road according to Sina.com, pointed to, as always, by Dennis Lee's indispensible blog. A few pictures from the event:

Here she is flanked by Yves Carcelle the CEO of LV and an unidentified guy who also gets a pair of scissors. Note to the young models behind them: When you are hired to act as the backdrop for an international movie star and a powerful and wealthy luxury goods executive who are doing something essentially silly but still deemed important enough to spend lots of time and money, don't blow it by looking hostile or grumpy. Accepted looks include: bored, slightly pained or stoned. Unacceptable looks include all of the ones shown in this picture.

The same scene a bit earlier before the scissors have come out. Yves Carcelle, even as CEO, is a merchant to his core. Here he could be pitching a time share in Hawaii to Gong Li. The models in back look, if anything, even more outrageously inappropriate. Save the contemptuous looks for the photographers while on the runway--looking like that at someone who could bury your career with a word is not the road to success.

Finally made it inside where Gong Li's forced smile shows that she might not be enjoying every moment of talking with this grinning idiot, a fat guy who thinks that a two button suit makes him look svelte. She is probably a few minutes away from having the dangerous looking security type in all black break the guy's nose.

Our chubby friend may be important since Carcelle's face is brick red as he tries to figure out just who said what to who and if anyone is about to be embarrassed or offended. The polyglot nature of gatherings like these must be a challenge--with a bit of English spoken as well as Mandarin and French and perhaps a few other languages.

One assumes that Gong Li is accessorized in LV and the black, high necked, sleeveless, keyhole cut outfit is lovely . There is one thing the seems really odd though--instead of a strapless bra (or none at all) for this outfit she seems to wearing some type of undergarment with jeweled straps that are shown clearly here. Not a bad look just an unusual (and possibly uncomfortable) one.

A flood of Chinese stars in cheongsam

"CRIEnglish" has an article that is a joy to those stuck in the snowy wastes of the crumbling wreck of North America's former industrial heartland. A perfect timeless or evergreen feature piece, on that could run almost anytime, it is little more than scores of pictures of actresses, singers and models, most of them Chinese, wearing variations of the cheongsam.

I have only a few quibbles with the editors at CRIEnglish. The first is their count on the number of different versions of the cheongsam that Maggie Cheung wears in "In the Mood for Love". The article states that it is 23 while I counted 32 different ones. Their source may be better than mine (I might have simply counted a few twice) but I will stick with the larger number for now.

Another is that they showed some dresses that could only be seen as a cheongsam if someone decided they were. This was probably due to them wanting to run as many pictures as possible, a decision with which I fully agree. Frederick Engels was correct when he wrote that quantity becomes quality (or the more, the better) so we can put with a few instances of red mini-dresses with capped sleeves stuck in among the flood of pictures of the real thing.

Interesting contrast showing how close to perfect this garment can be and why is has been so popular for so long--Celine Dion wearing what looks to be exactly the same dress as Gong Li (what, her again?) with both of them looking perfectly smashing.

Here is Celine Dion at some red carpet event with Jennifer Lopez in a slip dress. Dion's gown accents her willowy figure and essentially keeps her from disappearing while next to the more abundant (and more abundantly displayed) assets of Jennifer Lopez:

Someone should have told Jennifer to lose that green belt/sash/whatever with the huge fabric flower but that is another story.

Similar poses in the same dress--note the piping on the sleeve holes, for example--Celine Dion and Gong Li:

 

I won't bother with any more images--CRI has a truckload of them.

A quick update since durian dave mentioned the picture of Cecilia Cheung--I agree it is a lovely image--and it is a bit buried at CRI, this is it:

Jet Li and accceptance of emigration

The post below discusses the reaction of Chinese internet users to Gong Li officially emigrating from China and becoming a citizen of Singapore. One of her compatriots, Jet Li, followed the same path recently. Like Gong Li he hadn't really lived in China for years and his moving to Singapore was termed a family matter. In Gong Li's case she had married a citizen of the island nation at the tip of the Malay peninsula. For Jet Li it was the education of his daughter who had started school there.

In this case there wasn't such blanket condemnation from the "netizens"--in an article here there is a lively although quickly tiresome discussion among those with an internet connection and an opinion concerning Jet Li which is only notable by the difference between it and the attacks on Gong Li as a traitor to her country.

CRIEnglish has this story which simply recounts what the writer knew about the subject and the Global Times covers it here, going so far as to say that "No matter which citizenship Li chose, he is still a Chinese in many people’s eyes and deserves our respect for his contribution to China and its people" giving him the kind of respect of which Gong Li clearly wasn't worthy.

There are probably a lot of reasons for this disparity in reaction--Jet Li almost always played heros, including some of the most heroic heros ever put on film while Gong Li did not, for example--but the most obvious one to this not well informed outsider is gender. Jet Li is doing the right thing for his family by turning his back on China while Gong Li is selling out her birthright by joining her husband in his country of birth.

Who doesn't love Gong Li?

Or perhaps another way to put it is: who hates Gong Li? According to the media storm that hit last year after she announced she was becoming a citizen of Singapore, hundreds of millions of people in China. As is so often the case when the pulse of the body politic is taken in the PRC the "netizens"--a very clumsy neologism--were consulted and were found to be outraged. For them it was a matter of national pride--China doesn't allow its citizens to hold dual nationality so she had to discard her Chinese citizenship. Based on the reaction one might think she had blown up a section of the Great Wall. Gong Li was branded a traitor, a shame to her native land, unworthy of being called Chinese and "the most hated Chinese celebrity". Since that last epithet ran in China.org.cn and was illustrated by the picture at the top of this post it may have been at least partially sardonic toward the subjects of the article although such publications aren't known for their irony.

In Singapore itself the "Straits Times" piled on a bit, claiming that Gong Li had "raised the ire" of Singaporeans by not being present when her citizenship was actually granted. Read the Breaking News accompanied by a lovely picture of our heroine pledging allegiance to her new homeland and looking quite resolute. Even the "TimesOnline" found the space to cover the story and find internet users to quote.

Whatever Gong Li's reasons for becoming a citizen of Singapore may be, we know that she has been married to Singaporean tobacco tycoon Ooi Hoe Soeng since 1996.

I was going to quote some statistics about how Chinese internet users are predominately young, urban and male so that using such sources might be a bit like taking a survey on fraternity row at a big college but I will just reference a summary from the China Internet Network Information Center here. There is a link at to the entire PDF report, which seems to take a long time to load, at the end of the article.

There are those who don't hate Gong Li, though--or at least are able for professional reasons to act as if they value her company. Among them are

Aishwarya Rai and Letitia Casta, her fellow L'oreal Beauty Ambassadors, (a more descriptive title I cannot imagine) at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. (Zimbio photo)

 

At the premiere of "Hannibal Rising" she is getting the most clumsy looking semi-air kiss from Peter Webber, the director, as Jay-Z models a scarf. (Zimbio photo)

This unidentified English socialite gets along with her fine as they compare the number of feathers each has on her dress at Britian's Best awards in 2008. (Zimbio photo)

And at the amfAR gala during the Venice Film Festival in 2002, where she showed she could turn into the camera with a killer smile while not knocking over her water glass, her dinner companions didn't seem to mind Gong Li's presence. It might be possible to look as perfectly elegant--Grace Kelly comes to mind--but certainly not more so. (WireImage)

And like the "Beauty Ambassadors" picture above, here is another paean to multiculturalism as Gong Li glams it up with Andie Macdowell and Kerry Washington, neither of whom seem to have a problem getting along with her. I guess backs were in that year. (Zimbio photo)

Gong Li's attitude might be summed up by what she said over a decade ago when asked in an inteview about how she dealt with the press. It may well be the case for the zillions of netizens who have such hatred for her. In an interview from 1997 which can be found here. She says, "If I don't see what people write about me, they don't bother me. If I do, I'll curse them out in my heart. So I laugh it all off."

Gong Li for Aimer Lingerie at China Fashion Week event--How a superstar deals with a wardrobe malfunction

There have been plenty of pictures on the web of Gong Li in a knoockout beaded dress at a packed press conference for Aimer Lingerie--the one in which she was asked at least twice what her bust size is. Here are a few more that were picked up by AdmiringGongLi largely from the the entertainment news site Yoka which show how to deal with a recalcitrant train on a dress and still remain calm and on message.

It all starts here, with Gong Li, flanked by according to Yoka "dozens of security guards" plus a few well wishers and fans, making her way to the stage for the press conference. Very practically she is holding the train of her dress which is fine backstage but hardly the way to make an entrance before the gathered fashion press. Incidentally the train looks like a disaster waiting to happen, a very light material that might simply fall straight down and become just a bunch of cloth waiting to trip the unwary wearer.

Which it does. This looks like the first mishap backstage Gong Li and everyone else stop in their tracks to get things sorted out. Clearly she stepped on her train.

She makes it on stage with a bunch of people without mishap although with a lot of people standing around trying not to make things worse:

but then gets tangled up again in the dress from hell.

So now she has to deal with questions while a helpful woman from Aimer tries to keep the train straight:

She really has her work cut out for her--this is a good illustration of both how flimsy and light the skirt and train are and how now matter what happens, it seems, any movement finds it under Gong Li's feet again:

By now she was probably thinking: "This is the last time I let the client pick out the dress" plus maybe "How much am I getting paid for this campaign?" but also "It beats getting strapped into those insane corsets every day for Curse of the Golden Flower", but playing things off with a laugh:

Everything works out, of course, the gathered hounds of the press don't get to report on a pratfall by a major star and she has the perfect self-deprecating, ruefully sexy look at the end.

The opening shot of the campaign. They might be selling underwear but it looks like something from a Roland Emmerich movie.

Terri Kwan, Zhu Xuan at Prince of Tears Opening--How to wear (and not wear) a cheongsam

The the recent Taipei premier of "Prince of Tears" Terri Kwan wore a radically styled cheongsam with the usual demure neckline but with a more daring cut on on the back and particularly the sides. She paired it with pumps that closely matcher her dress and simple accessories and looked great. As did Zhu Xuan in a short eventing dress that looked like it was made of dyed feathers and Christian Louboutin T-strap pumps. Christian Louboutin seems to be one of the weapons of choice on the red carpet this season for Chinese stars. From szonline through Dennis Lee's blog.

A few pictures from the red carpet showing that Terri Kwan is fully aware of the power of the traditional Chinese dress, updated but still with much the expected structure.

Here are a couple of Terri Kwan and Zhu Xuan, the first particularly showing the bold cut of Terri's gown.

While the cheongsam is by no means foolproof--here Japanese singer Ayumi Hamasaki shows that it is not always flattering to the wearer. For example if the placement of the side slit makes it difficult to sit in a ladylike or even comfortable looking position:

And Paris Hilton shows a westernized, updated (updated to the Madonna Blonde Ambition Tour 20 years ago) and quite dreadful version, although picking on Paris Hilton's fashion sense really isn't fair.

The ne plus ultra of the cheongsam as a ravishing outfit, of course, is Maggie Cheung with her 32 or 33 different ones in "In the Mood for Love". Since the film was set in the 1960s and Maggie's character lived among people from Shanghai who had been uprooted to Hong Kong, the dresses were traditionally cut with the silk printed in astounding patterns. A few examples:

Here is a close-up to show the lavish pattern of one of them:

The lovely Tang Wei, while most notorious for her nudity in "Lust Caution" also wore great looking cheongsams during scenes in which she was allowed to keep her clothes on. For example:


And there is Gong Li. There is always Gong Li. Any actress who could look exquisite in a padded peasant's coat with a ratty scarf tied around her hair (which she did in "The Story of Qiuju") is going to be simply sublime in a cheongsam, particularly one cut like this one: