MARY PING'S autumn/winter 2006 fashion show at the Scandinavian House in New York was like any other big-brand show. The crowd fell silent as the lights dimmed and a barrage of leggy models draped in Ping's latest styles paraded before a standing-room-only crowd. Spotlights were circling, music was blaring and cameras were flashing. It was a loud and glamorous event.
Ping's combined studio, showroom and home, however, is nothing like the show she puts on. The 27-year-old designer creates her award-winning collection on the top floor of a small four-storey walk-up in the Upper East Side. The cluttered workspaces are strewn with scissors, fabric and samples of her work.
The designer herself is petite and reticent. She wears a white, oversized, hooded fleece and grey leggings, and her long black hair is pulled back into a ponytail. Her face is free of makeup and she adjusts her dark-rimmed glasses several times during the conversation.
Born in Queens to Chinese immigrants, Ping was six when she began designing clothes. 'I started out designing for my Barbies. Then, when I was 12, I made my very first garment - a fuchsia tent dress,' she says.
Both her mother, a self-proclaimed fashionista, and her grandmother helped her realise her dream. 'My grandma taught me how to sew and once I learnt how to do that, I knew design was what I wanted to do,' she says.
Ping didn't study fashion. She took a degree in visual arts from New York's Vassar College, where she developed an interest in art. 'It was basically about teaching myself and I designed based on my own personal taste,' she says.