That makes fashion’s most-watched woman (pop diva, category) one of the few attendees at this year's Met Gala (theme: “China: Through the Looking Glass”) to wear a Chinese designer. It also caps off a big moment for Pei, who is fresh off a collaboration with MAC Cosmetics and has two garments in the Met’s exhibition. She is a go-to designer for Chinese stars like Li Bingbing and Zhang Ziyi and has been profiled by The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times Magazine, but her name remains relatively unknown in Western fashion (a curious phenomenon of the kind the Met’s exhibit is well-poised to address). Profiling her in 2010, Cathy Horyn compared Pei to Charles James, the American couturier who was the subject of last year’s Costume Institute exhibit.