We are what we wear: "China's First Lady of fashion" Ma Ke

Designer Ma Ke. [Photo provided to Newsplusradio.cn]

Ma Ke is considered one of the most influential figures in the Chinese fashion circle. The designer came under the spotlight in 2013, when China's First Lady Peng Liyuan won public recognition around the world by dressing in Ma's elegant design when she accompanied her husband, President Xi Jinping, on official trips abroad.

Western media called Ma Ke "China's first lady of fashion". However, the cutting-edge yet reclusive designer says her pursuit of "fashion" is more than just setting trends with her fancy needlework.

Now let's follow our reporter Wang Lei to learn more about Ma Ke and her design world.

Born in the 1970s in Changchun city of northeastern China's Jilin Province , Ma Ke's earliest memory of fashion design came from watching her mother and grandma make dresses for the family using an old sewing machine.

Ma says for her, "clothes" is actually different from "fashion".

"Fashion contains the concept of 'timeliness', that's why it's updating and changing all the time. Fashion can easily become outdated, as there are new designs every season. But 'clothes' is not at all about timeliness, it originates from people's basic needs, like to keep warm or block the sun. At the same time, it's endowed with social meanings and historical changes. People wear certain clothes on specific occasions such like weddings, funerals, and rituals. The culture and the spirit of a nation can all be conveyed in a garment."

Simple, neutral and earthy, it seems that Ma's design of "clothes" is a return to the traditional and the ordinary. And that's deeply rooted in her childhood, spent in the countryside, where nature gave her endless inspiration and also taught her how to cherish the beautiful surroundings.

"I can still remember the rush of joy I felt when I was picking mushrooms with my childhood friends in the mountains, farming with my grandparents and swimming together with fish in the rivers. I loved being in nature, surrounded by animals.That period of my childhood had a far-reaching impact on my later designs. Spending days in the countryside brings me a profound understanding of how close and interdependent people are with nature. I found my roots and core essence as a human being in the field, like breathing out and breathing in, my solid happiness just came from sharing the same fate with all the creations left by nature. "

"Born an ecologist", that's what Ma calls herself. The wisdom and talents gradually emerged in her later in her career as a fashion designer. Two years after her graduation from Suzhou Institute of Silk Textile Technology in east China's Jiangsu Province in 1992, she won the 2nd Brother Cup International Young Garment Design Competition with her Terra-cotta Warrior collection. A year later, the 24-year-old was listed as one of China's top ten fashion designers and ranked in the top five by Japan's Asahi Shimbun.

During the decade that followed college, Ma had been constantly exploring her ideal concept of clothes design and the spirit it should convey. Finally, she found the answer in rural China, where farmers still live the traditional lifestyle, getting up at sunrise, sleeping after sundown.

"When I consider what impresses me most, I always think of those hand-made stuffs in rural China, where the farmers' lives are almost insulated from fashion. However, from clothes to farm tools, every single thing they made is unique, and each of them has a story. They are totally different from massive industrial products. However, during my field trip to the villages, the most frequent sentence I heard from the craftsmen is 'Why you travel so far here to learn these things? They are almost useless.'"

And that deeply touched Ma Ke, she then started to reconsider the difference between fashion and clothes. In 2006, she created her own fashion brand and named her studio "Wu Yong", which means "useless" in Chinese. The name, she explains, comes from wanting to make things that may be perceived by the wider society as utterly useless useful once more.

"For me, the handmade stuff is the treasure that our ancestors left for us, they are warm, and filled with our national spirit and traditional values. Massive industrial products have squeezed the craftsmanship to the edge of existence, people started to look at usefulness as the sole motive for action. However, I think what makes us Chinese is our culture and traditional values, if we cannot find feelings and spiritual values in the material, it's somehow like giving up something precious."

Ma says as a Chinese designer, her job is to create a Chinese fashion and make clothes that identify one as Chinese. And that kind of insistence has won her critical acclaims around the world. In 2007, she was invited to the Paris Fashion Week where she become the first Chinese designer to showcase haute couture in fashion capital.

2013 is another big year for Ma, when public spotlight fell on her as media reported President Xi Jinping's wife, Peng Liyuan, dressed in clothes designed by Ma on official trips abroad.

Actually Ma has served as a personal designer for Peng since 2003, long before Peng became China's "fist lady". Ma described Peng's current style as "neat, simple, elegant but with a strong presence." And she insisted that Peng isn't as concerned with presenting a "first lady" style as she is with presenting an image of a modern Chinese woman to the world who is "independent-minded, affectionate and full of strength."

"Beauty isn't the same as fashion. It's far more important than fashion. Beauty is something from one's inner world, it's not just about nice appearance. It depends on individual thinking and years of accumulation.The true beauty is something eternal which can stand the test of time."

Talking about her design concept, Ma Ke sounds more like a philosopher than a fashion designer.

"What make things "luxurious"is not their prices, but the spirit and values behind it. Our traditions, our emotions, are all luxurious. For me, the ultimate luxury is from the richness of mind, which often is the expression for frugality. The spirit behind it is also elegant."

"Luxury of Austerity", the concept can be analyzed by looking around the Wu Yong store in Beijing. In the studio, everything is handmade. She uses natural materials and natural dye. She sticks to neutral, earthy colors. Her workers employ traditional clothing manufacturing techniques - spinning, weaving and even working on looms. The resulting garments appear simple, with a softly rough-hewn look.

Currently, Ma is joining efforts to a series activities organized by China.com, aiming to find stories behind the clothes passed down by people's ancestors that are valued as family heirlooms.

An exhibition themed "Xun Yi Wen Dao", which literally means exploring the stories and spirits behind old hand-made clothes will be held in Wu Yong studio in Beijing, starting the end of this October.

Ma Ke believes that inheriting traditional culture from the past and respecting ecology for the future are important moral responsibilities that should fall on today's designers.

"I think the exhibition provide the young generation a chance to explore the emotional connections with their previous generations. The hand-made clothes passed down by their ancestors, valued as family heirlooms can bridge the generation gap. Embedded in them is ancient wisdom, and only by knowing the past can we treasure the true beauty. I think that Chinese people should have more confidence in our own value and culture. We can lead, and my desire is to help display the uniqueness of our culture by what we wear."

The designer describes her philosophy as "state of mind that is Chinese". For Ma Ke, success on the catwalk is not her goal. In such a commercial age, her simple, slow yet delicate working philosophy and the patience of time, just endows her to go further.

"I just want to follow on my own faith, keep myself honest, being flexible but have integrity. I will try my best to protect the values behind the craftsmanship and inherit it. But we cannot expect instant results. It's just like planting a tree, it can't grow up overnight but it requires decades to bear fruit. "