Masha Ma: To Build An International Brand Of China'S Core

Paris, France -- as the first batch to break the "Symbolization" design with 80 of the international design language, Masha Ma is one of the few well-known designers in China. It is also one of the few Chinese designers on the official schedule of Paris fashion week.

At the central Saint Martin School of art and design in London, she worked as a design assistant for Veronique Branquinho and Alexander McQueen when she studied the bachelor's and master's degree of women's costume design.

She also won awards including Lancome color fashion and creative competition, Fashion Fringe fashion design competition and WGSN breakthrough designer.

She founded the same name brand Masha Ma in 2008, and founded the sub line MA by MA Studios in 2013. It is famous for its feminist aesthetics and creative design with modern sense. Now it has more than 45 outlets in Europe and China, and has gradually expanded its own outlets.

In the early days of entrepreneurship,

Instead of a designer who plays the ticket, he is determined to become a sustainable brand.

Choosing Shanghai, rather than a more concentrated media resource, as an entrepreneurial base, is because she sees a large garment manufacturing base around Beijing, Zhejiang and Shanghai.

"For example, there are some textile groups in Suzhou that can take the Uniqlo to Alexander Wang in full. They also have a lot of requirements for cooperative designers. They need to know the commodity planning and their brand maturity."

She said.

To a certain extent, this promoted her to always use high standards to demand herself.

From the beginning of the studio, it has been developing towards a framework that can turn into a perfect company.

From the beginning of the 3 people to the present nearly 50 people, from the production management, the edition room, the quality inspection, the merchandiser to retail, the distribution, the public relations, has the corresponding staffing, even has the independent legal affairs and the IT team.

Her most important design department was led by Masha personally and recruited from Paris.

The members of the trade union and Lesage embroidery workshop are divided into two groups according to the main sub line and compete with each other.

"This allows the company to have a strong linkage force, and any mistakes can be corrected in time, so that we can not afford to go forward without fear."

She said.

As a rare designer with strong business sense and foresight, she did not refuse to embrace business.

She uses Oriental philosophy to answer the relationship between independent design and business success: "independent design refers to the independence of art, quality and ideology, and how designers create better products for the world is a process of training and running in a big environment. You need to know how to negotiate with business without being affected and contaminated to achieve their artistic pursuits."

Then, she added in a Western sentence: "the designer is reconstruction (Zhong Jian), rather than an artist, just deconstruction (destruction) without any solution."

And moving from London Fashion week to Paris is also a long-term planning consideration.

Masha said: "London has great enthusiasm for new people. Every year, it keeps mining. It does not form a continuous industry and mechanism, which makes designers self destruction. It also leads to a high degree of conceptual design, but low maturity.

But the fashion week in Paris has a high standard of access, but once it has entered Paris, it will win respect and develop in a long and thin way.

At the same time, Masha in Paris and Shuangcheng, Shanghai, naturally encountered different industries and market environments.

When China is going to be the fashion of Europe for 200 years in 20 years, the problems she meets will naturally become more concentrated and concentrated.

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It is more like the United States, from the economic volume to the weather geography causing huge regional differences, and pragmatism and functional design tendencies, which is different from the European small and exquisite cultural layout.

She said, "I never complain, because it is all influenced by history and environment. For example, the workers' educational level and cultural long-term exposure habit are different, and there is no deep understanding of color sensitivity and aesthetics. For example, the water quality of China affects the color of printing and dyeing. Even the best formula in Italy can not achieve the same effect. These problems need to be solved for a long time, but this does not fundamentally affect the designer's ability to make real good products."

Instead of complaining, we should start from ourselves and change the environment of China.

She told BoF that Shanghai, especially the Hongkou District government, gave her a lot of support.

It is also because she spent a lot of effort to explain and communicate with the government, so that conservative officials understand why fashion is not only textiles, but has a profound relationship with culture and creative industries.

Masha dislikes Chinese symbols that cater to Western tastes.

She admits that the designers who played the Chinese flag and painted dragon and painted Phoenix on the cheongsam were all playing cultural collage, but they were the least Chinese designs.

"First, this aesthetic is an unrestrained ethnic culture rather than the elegant aesthetics of the Han people. For example, my favorite song dynasty culture is simple in shape, advanced in color and unconcerned in form."

She explained: "second, for example, the two dimensional expression of Chinese painting is colorful and metaphorical, and cultural collage is undoubtedly a foreign way.

Those designs are not the same from spirit to practice.

The nature of China lies in the process of thinking and expression, such as the way silk flows, but we need to communicate in modern context.

On this fashion week in Paris, she first tried a Chinese style in her concept, and told a modern story from China in an international language.

"I like to understand the whole world like crouching tiger and hidden dragon, not Huang Feihong."

She said.