Asian, Female, and Fashionable At New York’s Museum Of Chinese In America
New York-based label, Slow and Steady Wins the Race
This week, Jing Daily correspondents had the chance to stop by New York City’s Museum of Chinese in America (MoCA) for the event MoCA Style: Female, Fashionable, NY, which kicked off their winter/spring 2013 fashion-focused program. The event featured an eclectic panel of fashion designers and creatives, including designer Mary Ping from Slow and Steady Wins the Race, Cynthia Leung, New York PR for Balenciaga, and designer Jade Lai of Creatures of Comfort.
Moderated by Christina Moon of Parsons The New School for Design, the discussion moved through the professional and personal lives of each panelist, shedding light on their daily schedules, backgrounds, and personal styles. As the discussion opened to the audience, we asked the panel the following question:
Jing Daily: As Chinese-Americans yourselves, can you describe, from your own experiences, the progress that Chinese or Chinese-American fashion designers and creatives have made in recent years, either in New York or abroad? And can you speculate where they’re headed in the years to come?
Creatures of Comfort NY, at 205 Mulberry Street
Answered by Mary Ping: I think it’s very remarkable, in the last 30+ years, that you have a changing landscape in New York City of Asian-American designers, a large portion of [whom] happen to be Chinese-American. I think for that evolution on a global scale, this is only the cusp. There’s a lot of fostering abroad as well. I know they may not be household names to us, but in China, there’s definitely the equivalent of a Jason Wu or a Vivienne Tam. But even if you were to take someone like Vivienne Tam, she’s got 15 stores already in China, and more and growing.
So the broad arm hold is just going to get bigger. In the exhibit, we’ll investigate the more academic side of the catalysts, the culture forces and influencers. I think that in the same way the 70s saw the ascent of Anne Kleins and Ralph Laurens and Calvin Kleins, right now, we’ll see the ascent of the Asian-American designer. I think it’ll be interesting. I think evolutionary-wise, from a design standpoint, I want to see if that starts to encapsulate a certain style.
For more information about MoCA’s fashion programs, see Jing Daily’s previous coverage and the official MoCA website.