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Fashion design in China: ‘Thetrick is to embrace the chaos’

Masha Ma

服装设计师

伦敦艺术大学中央圣马丁艺术学院毕业校友

她十六岁远赴英国留学，2006年毕业于中央圣马丁艺术学院获得女装设计专业学士学位，并继续攻读女装设计硕士学位。如今，Masha Ma作为年轻一代设计师已引起业界的关注，她亦成为了巴黎时装周上官方唯一的一位中国设计师。

‘My inspirations come from both China andEurope. I spent 13 years in London and Paris’: Masha Ma in her Shanghai studio.Photograph: Jonathan Browning for the Observer

One evening in the mid-1990s, Masha Ma layin her bedroom in Beijing and pored over a Chinese edition of Dante’s Inferno featuring Botticelli’s earlyillustrations. It disturbed her, and not just because she was 12 years old atthe time. “The Chinese translation made the text sound like a happy Sundayouting, but the drawings depicted a bloody nightmare,” says the Central SaintMartins graduate who is now China’s most celebrated young fashion designer. “Istared at the pages for hours trying to understand what was going on. Somethingwas very wrong.”

We’resitting in Ma’s Shanghai studio drinking jasmine tea served from a pot adornedwith a naked couple. The new building is at the northern end of the Bund, thecity’s grand old promenade overlooking the famous futuristic skyline across theHuangpu river. It’s a suitably prime spot for a designer who is poised tobecome the country’s first international design superstar. Ma isrevolutionising the global image of Chinese haute couture with her startlinglymodern and clever creations, and there’s not a dragon or phoenix or a potentialpizza meme in sight.

Although sheis still relatively young – she turns 30 later this year – it’s taken a while.The Dante episode confirmed her early suspicions that a gap existed between theknowledge available to her in her homeland and in the world beyond. Post-Tiananmenand pre-internet, China wasin the grip of far tighter restrictions on foreign cultural influences than itis today. Beijing-born Ma, the only child of academics, knew she had to go elsewhere.And if it happened to be a place where manifestations of hell, creative orotherwise, were more explicit, that was fine with her. “I’ve always beenattracted to the darker side of things.”

She choseLondon. At the age of 16, Ma won a place on the foundation course at CentralSaint Martins and spent the next seven years there doing BA and MA degrees.During her studies she worked as an intern with Alexander McQueen – her firstfashion idol – and Veronique Branquinho. After a successful graduation show,she started her own Masha Ma label and launched her acclaimed debut collectionin Paris in 2012. Naomi Campbell, Georgia May Jagger and Lady Gaga have wornher designs. In March this year, British Airways unveiled a new aircraftfeaturing livery it commissioned from Ma to mark Sino-British cultural ties.The design is a red rose intertwined with bamboo snaking along the Boeing 777-200’sside, with Ma’s signature beside it. “My name is on a plane,” she says asthough the thought has just struck her. “That is crazy.”

The twoyears since she returned to China in early 2013 have left little time forreflection. She has set up a design studio with more than 50 staff and launcheda younger retail line, MA by MA, featuring sporty feminine styles aimed at theburgeoning ranks of style-minded urbanites. She has opened two MA by MAboutiques in Shanghai, the country’s fashion capital, and plans to open around100 more in China and elsewhere. And that’s on top of producing her regularcatwalk collections for ParisFashion Week, where she has shown eight times sofar.

“When I camehere I had nothing, not even a pair of scissors,” says Ma. She speaks in arefined British drawl with a few serrated edges of her native tongue, like apolished razor. “I didn’t plan to return so quickly. It was more like the godsdragged me back. But this is the new China. Things happen super-fast.” Huddledon a black pleather armchair in her private office, she is not wearing one ofher own exquisitely cut designs today. She’s dressed in black leggings andhigh-top trainers – a show of surrender, along with the rest of us mortals, tothe monsoon-like rain that has pounded Shanghai for three days straight.

Ma is now ina position to subvert stereotypes about China and Chinese style simply by beingherself. Garish cultural references such as dancing lions or dragons, she says,are meaningless to her. “I have nothing against them, but they were never partof the Soviet-like China I grew up in.” For at least a decade after she wasborn in 1985, the benefits of post-Mao economic freedom still hadn’t filtereddown much to the masses. “Everything was very grey, very uniform. Whether youwere a party official or a factory worker, everyone wore the same drab clothesand used the same cups and had the same pattern on their sofa.”

Ma’s parentsoften worked overseas, so she grew up mostly with her grandmother, who was bornin Shanghai before the communist era. The city was then China’s arts, jazz andfashion hub. Ma’s grandmother never lost her love of the finer things. “Shealways needed something beautiful in her life. I remember she had this littlejewellery box that she probably risked her life to save during the CulturalRevolution.” At the height of Maoism, untilthe mid-1970s, any form of personal adornment was banned. “There was a Chanelflower brooch and pearl necklaces, and all these soft, feminine things. Mygrandmother always woke up singing, and she forced me to play the piano. Shewas a huge influence.”

The art decoedifices that survive in Shanghai are now dwarfed by steel-and-glass symbols ofChinese new money, including a skyscraper that, according to a map I picked upat the train station, is “designed to look like raw diamonds”. But Ma saysbeing back in the city of her grandmother’s birth keeps her close to herspirit. “If I have to describe the type of woman I design for, it’s her:someone who never shouts for attention, but who refuses to be silenced.”

East meets west: Masha Ma has shown at ParisFashion Week eight times, including these designs for spring/summer andautumn/winter 2015. Photograph: Getty

Chinesewomen were ready to listen. After Ma became one of the few mainland-borndesigners ever to be invited to show at Paris Fashion Week – still the ultimatedestination for any designer – media coverage about her at home exploded. Initialsupport came mostly from the small but powerful high-fashion elite led byAngelica Cheung, editor-in-chief of Vogue China, whose imprimaturis everything.

Cheung’scircle has been championing homegrown designers for almost a decade, including Uma Wang andQiu Hao, two earlier graduates of Central Saint Martins whose designs arelauded internationally.

Such effortslaid the groundwork for a broader shift in taste that coincided with Ma’shomecoming. After years of consuming foreign luxury brands to beyond saturationpoint (Louis Vuitton toilet-roll covers aplenty), fashionable Chinese had begunto seek out a more discreet, sophisticated aesthetic. Conspicuous consumptionamong the super-rich – dubbed the Bling Dynasty by banker-turned-author ErwanRambourg –had also swiftly become passé thanks to a ferocious government crackdown oncorruption. Ma’s designs tapped into the current mood. “Masha Ma is the perfectfusion of subtle class and edgy femininity for the modern woman,” enthused arecent issue ofElle China.“She is fast becoming a superstar at home and abroad.”

The thickwedge of hair that obscures the left side of Ma’s face is distracting at first,like talking to someone who’s constantly turning their head away. Still, thestyle suits her. She accepts that her presence in China is inevitably turningher into a pin-up girl for Chinese design, but she’s ambivalent about it, too.“I don’t like lazy categorisations. My inspirations come from both China andEurope. I spent 13 years – almost half my life – in London and Paris. In that timeI came back to visit China only once, after the first six years. Beijing was sodifferent I couldn’t find my way home. It’s meaningless to label me a ‘Chinesedesigner’ as though that’s what defines me.”

Predictably,London astonished her when she arrived as a teen in 2000. “I was so young. Icouldn’t believe that so many different elements could coexist. There was aqueen who looked like she always wore the same hat and all this politetradition. And then all this crazy music and dynamic creativity and intellectualdebate. It was like this beautiful clash.”

Ma threwherself into the fashion-student lifestyle, hanging out in galleries and greasyspoons and going to gigs. “I was into grunge and obscure garage bands. I alsowent to classical music concerts whenever I could.” She read everything shecould find, from mythology to philosophy to Roland Barthes, and relishedCentral Saint Martins’ place in the nation’s artistic life. “The college had aplaque saying the Sex Pistols had held their first concert there, and we usedthe same scratched table to design that McQueen and Galliano had used. Thetoilets smelled of pee. But it was all so alive – you could feel a great senseof history and British culture.”

Ma says hertime in the capital was invaluable. “London taught me that chaos is vital. Allcountries have problems, but the trick is to embrace the chaos and try to finda balance. If everything is the same and super-organised – how boring is that?”By the same token, she adds, it’s thrilling to be in China now that the nationis in such a dynamic state of transition. There’s a chance “to write historyevery day”.

Boundaries,on many fronts, are eroding with the rest of the world, and the country isbecoming much more globalised. “The quest to find the essence of modern Chinaconcerns every creative person here. It’s very exciting. But it’s not apolitical mission or something we should be expected to deliver just becausewe’re Chinese – it has to come naturally.”

Cutting edge: inside Masha Ma’s Shanghaistudio. Photograph: Jonathan Browning for the Observer

Ma says sheis inspired by the “more mysterious, forgotten” aspects of Chinese history andphilosophy, and how they resonate in contemporary life. Her latest collectionin Paris in March featured geometric designs and rich earth colours partlybased on ancient ideas about nature and the principles of classicalarchitecture. She mixed angular shapes with soft fabrics, and classicsilhouettes with rough textures. She sent her models down the runway to aneerie, contrasting soundtrack of urban techno that she composed herself.

“Europeanswho saw the collection thought it was very Chinese. But Chinese people thoughtit was very European,” she says. “That was exactly the reaction I was hopingfor – that kind of cultural confusion. I’m not interested in creatingsuperficial collages by just adding various influences. I want to createsomething wholly new. I’m not saying I’m there yet, but the possibilities seemto exist.”

The cut ofher designs is the key element for her. Ma taught herself pattern cutting inher teens from a book that her father brought back from Japan. “It was a methodthat required an almost psychotic level of precision. It was tough to master,but it enabled me to add depth and originality to the structure of my pieces.”Central Saint Martins was less dogmatic about technical skills, she says, butshe learned almost everything else there. She credits the brilliant LouiseWilson, then head of the college’s MA course, who diedlast year: “Professor Wilson encouraged me not to be afraid of things thatseemed abnormal or weird. She gave me total freedom to try new ideas.”

In her earlyteens, Ma won awards for classical painting. Her family assumed she would be anartist. She chose fashion instead after reading a copy of Elle China. “I suddenly realised that fashion hasits own specific language, its own way to communicate. It was similar to artbut less introspective. Fashion has a utility and charm that can bring beautyinto people’s lives in a practical way. That appealed to me, as I’m a personwho likes to find solutions.”

Fashion’simpact on people’s lives, as Ma sees it, is also how she rationalises theproblem of Chinese political repression. Her return to China in 2013 coincidedwith the inauguration of President XiJinping. As well as launching his anti-corruptionpurge, Xi has cracked down heavily on public dissent and internet freedom. Mais not interested in turning her work into a form of protest. “Of course thereare big problems, but I don’t think standing around shouting like it’s 1989 allover again is the right strategy. People of my age or younger don’t have thatfear of history in our DNA. We want to keep moving forward in any way we can.”

Ma is too smart to think fashion alone can compensate for the lack of political freedom.But she does believe in its power to foster self-expression and confidence. Sheoften posts encouraging messages to her 190,000 mostly female followers onWeibo, China’s version of Twitter, such as “Don’t hesitate to say what youthink” or “Be yourself, you don’t have to fake anything.” Cynthia Zhang, Ma’s26-year-old assistant, says Ma’s designs empower younger Chinese women byshowing them that clothes don’t need to be uncomfortable to be feminine. “You canbe cool and relaxed, and dress to please yourself.”

Ma travelsto Paris, where she has an office, at least once a month, as well as to NewYork and London a few times a year. It’s a gruelling schedule on top of thegoal she’s set herself to build China’s first truly international designerbrand. She relaxes mostly by reading – anything from gardening magazines toKafka. She also has a two-year-old Corgi called Pillow (he looks like one) thatshe says is “her experiment in being a human”. She lives alone, and owning adog forces her to think about the needs of something other than herself or herwork.

For all herpassion and loquacious intensity – she has talked at high speed for two hourssolid – Ma seems remarkably cool and grounded. She tells me that AlexanderMcQueen’s suicide in 2010 made her ponder her own compulsion for perfectionism.“Lee’s death was horribly sad, but it wasn’t a complete surprise. It was therein his work; he was always on that fragile edge of life and death.”

AfterwardsMa decided her own career aim was “not be to the best, just to be better”. It’sa mantra she says she’s stuck to since. “Fashion at this level is brutal. Butif you have that goal to keep improving, if you always give yourself somethingto work towards, I think you’ll manage to stay alive.”

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