A quiet designer

Ma Ke's rise to fame after dressing up first lady Peng Liyuan is not hindering her pursuing an inner purpose

For people like me, who dislike primping up for a fashion show but sometimes have to go owing to professional reasons, a recent event was a welcome change. The organizers insisted on a dress code, though, but it read: "Please dress in a casual and comfortable way - no tight skirts or high-heels." The fashion show was held at a factory-turned-creative space behind Beijing's National Art Museum on a Mid-Autumn Festival evening, and I wore my jeans and sandals. As soon as I arrived, I knew why high-heels were barred. We climbed up a set of steep steel steps that led us to the roof of a building, where we were served fruit in handmade bowls, traditional desserts wrapped in leaves and homemade rice liquor.

It was Chinese fashion doyenne Ma Ke's show.

Then we walked to the roof of a neighboring building, where guests sat on grass cushions on the floor to watch the show. That is why the advisory against tight skirts was issued.

There was no fancy lighting either, with a big full moon hanging in the dark sky serving as the perfect backdrop. A woman was seated by an old wooden machine, spinning cotton, while another wove clothes at a distance.

An ensemble of about 30 people aged between 6 and 70, including several from different continents, was gathered for the show. They all dressed in basic single-color handmade clothes and moved slowly from one end of the rooftop to another.

Unlike usual fashion shows that blast recorded music on speakers, this instead had one folk singer from the Katatipul tribe, members of which live in southeastern Taiwan.

The city's neon lights were visible from where I was seated, but in a way I was lost in the quiet evening that Ma had created.

Although known in China's fashion industry for the past two decades, Ma became a household name overnight after President Xi Jinping's wife, Peng Liyuan, wore clothes designed by Ma during Xi's first state visit to Russia in March last year.

After media reports suggested that Ma, 43, may have designed Peng's clothes, people started to look for Ma online. Websites showed that the designer had an association with Exception, a Guangzhou-based brand that she and her former husband created.

A few days later, Ma publicly acknowledged that she was indeed behind Peng's look, but also clarified that she had left Exception in 2006 and had taken a different direction.

In 1988, Ma left her hometown, Changchun in northeastern Jilin province, to study design at the Suzhou Silk Institute in eastern Jiangsu province.

After graduating in 1992, she joined a fashion company in Guangzhou in southern China's Guangdong province. After three years, she felt it was "a disaster for a designer to work in a company that only pursued profit".

She then met designer Mao Jihong and married him. The couple founded Exception in 1996. It is one of China's first independent fashion labels. Mao took care of marketing and branding while Ma focused on designing.

Exception produced simple yet attractive women's ready-to-wear clothes and secured a number of loyal high-end customers, including Peng.

In 2001, when Peng, then a popular singer, was performing in Guangzhou, Ma was introduced to her by a TV reporter. Ma designed the dress for Peng's performance at the 2002 China Central Television Spring Festival Gala, the popular annual TV show.

When Peng asked Ma to design a dress for her first state visit, she agreed without hesitation.

"I believe if the first lady dresses in a simple but elegant way and presents unique Chinese traditions, people of the country would follow the style," she says.

Exception, meanwhile, has grown into a big company, driven by Mao's ambition. But Ma's true calling lay elsewhere.

The more she traveled through China's countryside, she says, the more she realized that traditional craftsmanship was dying in the villages and that she could help revive the heritage through alternative fashion.

In 2006, Ma moved to Zhuhai, another city in Guangdong. She and Mao divorced.

"The fashion industry pushes people to change their wardrobes every season," she says. Actually, we don't need to. I can wear a comfortable piece for five, six or even 10 years. When I was young, my mother would wear my grandmother's clothes and my mother passed hers to me. It still happens in villages."

She rented a private garden that had once belonged to Tang Shaoyi (1862-1938), the first premier of the Republic of China. She turned it into a workshop and recruited about 20 rural craftsmen to spin cotton, weave and dye the clothing on machines that were used a century ago.

Ma's new label Wu Yong means useless in Chinese.

"Everything in nature is useful. There are many things that people consider useless and throw away, but they are in fact useful. It's dangerous to use up all of nature's resources and not recycle them," she says.

Didier Grumpach, then-chairman of the Federation Francaise de la Couture, a respected figure in world fashion, visited her in Zhuhai and invited her to present at the Paris Fashion Week.

In 2008, at her Paris Haute Couture Week showing, models performed tai chi to Mongolian music.

The idea of offering people an eco-friendly lifestyle came to her last year after she was invited to visit the 77 Creative Industry Park in Beijing. She decided to step outside the comfort of her Zhuhai workshop and move beyond clothes.

Following months of preparation, Ma opened her new workshop in the same industry park in Beijing, where she displays clothes and household goods that are all made from natural material.

Her vision helps rural artisans too.

"I will not sell clothes in big shopping malls," Ma says.

chenjie@chinadaily.com.cn