Fashion’s Masha Ma out to catch outdoor gear wave in China by designing for Kolon Sport
Fresh from a Paris Fashion Week triumph with a signature hard-edged collection inspired by Wong Kar-wai film 2046, Ma has another date in mind, China’s Winter Olympics in 2022, with design role at Kolon Sport China
The future may be uncertain, but that’s exciting for Chinese fashion designer Masha Ma.
Her recent Paris Fashion Week show was inspired by director Wong Kar-wai’s film 2046, set almost 50 years after Hong Kong’s 1997 British handover to China, so, she says, “the collection was kind of interpreted to express a sense of the uncertainty of the future. But at the same time, that uncertainty is kind of essential, inspiring and exciting.”
While the front row in Paris gushed over her hard-edged collection, bigger news went almost unnoticed.
Fashion designer Masha Ma on challenge of designing Team China Olympic outfits
Having launched four labels of her own Ma, 33, has just joined Kolon Sport China as chief design officer and helped celebrate the recent opening of the brand’s Deji Plaza store in Nanjing, capital of eastern China’s Jiangsu province.
Kolon Sport China, established in 2006 in a joint venture with Chinese giant Anta Sports, is being repositioned with a younger and more fashionable edge under Ma’s direction.
Until the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, the sports sector will grow faster than any other in fashion
“We chose Masha because she’s young and has an international sensibility,” says Hajun Yang, chairman of Kolon Sport China.