Fashion Forward

Mary Ping ’00 became interested in fashion at the age of six when, in her family’s home in Queens, she used to look through her mother’s fashion magazines and watch her grandmother sew.

Ping (pictured left) maintained her interest through four years at Vassar and postgraduate design study, and quickly applied it to her own signature design label based in New York. But it wasn’t until Sarah Jessica Parker carried one of Ping’s bags on the HBO program Sex and the City that Ping began to get serious attention.

An art major who also worked as a set and costume designer for several theater productions at Vassar, Ping has held exhibitions in New York City at Olympus Fashion Week in a UPS-sponsored show for up-and-coming designers, and at Lincoln Center. She designs two lines: Mary Ping, an elegant, upscale brand, and Slow and Steady Wins the Race, which has more of a theoretical focus.

Ping says the clothes in her signature collection are “based on my personal aesthetic: a blurred line between masculine and feminine, casual and formal notions of dress. They are expensive but meant to last a lifetime.” In interviews, Ping has said she hopes to achieve a simple elegance with her clothes, and her collections have been noted for their draping fabrics, quality craftsmanship, and attention to detail.

Slow and Steady is not a traditional line of clothes. Each quarter a new collection comes out based on a theme. The limited collection is sold through 100 catalogues that are meant to be passed along from reader to reader. Each item in a collection sells for exactly $100. Some Slow and Steady collections have been titled “Pockets,” “Colors,” and “Seams.” Each collection seeks to integrate its theme with imaginative and unconventional designs. For this line, says Ping, “the commentary is the starting point.”

“Shirt,” for instance, features a white dress-shirt with sleeves designed to be tied around the midsection rather than worn on the arms. Another shirt has a zipper in front rather than buttons. Design itself becomes the issue as the consumer wonders why conventional shirts look the way they do instead of the way Ping has designed them.

The bag on Sex and the City was from the “Bags” collection of Slow and Steady. Each bag in the collection was a reproduction of a designer bag — from companies like Chanel, Gucci, and Dior — done in plain white canvas. The bag that Sarah Jessica Parker carried on TV was the $100 colorless shell of a Balenciaga bag. The simple, empty whiteness of these bags demand an explanation for the popularity, cultural capital, and monetary value of designer bags. “A good idea,” says Ping, “can be magical and should permeate the air and lead to different thoughts.”

The critical eye present in her designs is surely a remnant of the varied liberal arts education that Ping is quick to mention in interviews. At the start of all of Ping’s garments there is a seed of thought. She says the challenge of design is “creating a balance between an idea, its meaning, and the object itself that will exist in the realm of a person’s wardrobe.” Post Vassar, Ping has continued asking question through her designs, forcing customers who may just want something to wear to think about the cultural ramifications of fashion.

Visit www.maryping.com to see more of Ping’s designs.