At Tuesday’s Grand Dîner du Louvre, Eileen Gu swapped the medal podium for couture in Iris van Herpen.
The two’s friendship began when Van Herpen slid into her DMs. Her messages were blowing up just after the Olympics, but since she was following the designer it popped to the top.
“I’ve been a fan forever and ever,” she said, of both van Irpen’s visual and scientific approach to design. Gu was drawn specifically to her incorporation of fractals and how she uses material engineering. “I’m a huge nerd.”
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With the invite to the Grand Dîner du Louvre, timing was tight — Milan to Beijing to Paris to California, where she is set to serve as grand marshal of the city’s Chinese New Year parade on Thursday — but she added it to her schedule.
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She arrived at the atelier without having seen sketches. “They told me she had picked out special pieces for me specifically, and I absolutely trust her,” Gu said. Presented with several options, she chose the look that immediately resonated in a sculptural gown that echoed the Winged Victory of Samothrace, the Greek masterpiece presiding over the museum’s grand staircase — and the very space where dinner was served.
Her selection was the Dorhnii gown, made of flowy air fabric layers gradient-dyed from peach to plum, suspended with moon curve boning laser cut from translucent carbon fiber.
Inside the halls of the museum, it was a meeting for the skier and her muse. The piece has been a recurring theme throughout Gu’s life for the way the statue “is such a symbol of fuel, strength, power and the ecstasy of pursuit,” she said.
Seeing it illuminated at night, spotlighted against the darkened galleries, was emotional. “I just love it so much, and the dress matched it so perfectly.”
She made sure to document the moment, snapping pics with the marble figure after hours. The images quickly landed on her Instagram.
Gu had studied many of the paintings in art history class, she said, but has never seen them in person — including the Eugene Delacroix’s famous Liberty Leading the People. “It was much, much bigger than I expected,” she said.
Inside, Gu and Van Herpen were seated together, and talked about the bioluminescent dress van Herpen presented last summer and the science behind it, and fascinating features such as how the living material must be “charged” with photosynthesis, and how it requires rest. Gu, who majors in international relations at Stanford but said she takes physics classes for fun, was all in talking about the science.
They also found common ground in movement. Van Herpen trained as a dancer; Gu describes freestyle skiing as closer to choreography than competition. Unlike sports with fixed technical scores, freestyle is “100 percent style, 100 percent execution,” she said. Two athletes can perform the same trick and receive radically different scores based on personal expression. “If everybody’s wearing black and everybody’s doing the same trick, you should still be able to tell who is who just based on their body movements.”
Gu spent less than 20 hours in Paris before boarding the flight back to her hometown. Despite all the travel, she’s still transporting her most precious cargo — the three Olympic medals she won two weeks ago — in her carryon.
“Every flight I’ve taken, we’ve had to open it up for security, and they’re pretty surprised,” she said. “But they’re too precious to put in my checked bag.”