Ming Ma is filled with a feeling of awakening. After three sad years of lockdown, Shanghai has reopened, and the designer was able to return to the runway. Even over Zoom one could sense his energy, so it’s fitting that he titled his collection Mad Dynamics. “Fashion is mad dynamics; we all stay up all night putting our enthusiasm and energy into it,” he mused.
Ma embraces prettiness and that’s the first impression this lineup communicates, but there’s more to it than that. This season, he was interested in surprising contradictions, both in terms of presentation (his confectionery designs were shown in a concrete space) and in the sporty touches he added to festive dressing.
As simple as the opening look is, it has a couture pedigree of sorts. Ma was looking at ’80s tailoring, the flourishes of Charles James (who inspired the capelet’s sleeves), and Cristóbal Balenciaga’s shapes and bows. He said he was drawn to the way James and Balenciaga “manipulated volumes” that puffed or collapsed, and he chose materials like a papery silk cotton that emphasized those polar ways of being.
In Ma’s collection we see the collective fashion mind at play: note the trains and tweed cardigan jackets that have been so popular this season. More interesting still iss how Ma’s fascination with the golden era of couture lines up with that of other contemporary designers. When asked what he thinks is driving this nostalgia, Ma had this to say: “I think because the clothes [from that time] are really nicely constructed and built. Now things are getting more flat—Internet, blogging, Instagram—so when looking at [past fashions], you [see the] 3D aspect. I think people want to bring back some essence of fashion, because fashion itself is clothes-making, it’s construction and it’s tailoring; it’s really about techniques. In my point of view, I think it’s about the skills and [translating those] to have a modern twist [that relates to] what people are wearing now.”
One of the main narratives of the fall season has been the return to basics—either in the sense of casually elegant and functional clothes, or to the very building blocks of the profession. There’s nothing “basic” here, though; Ma employs time-tested skills to further his take on modern romance.
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