WUYONG Cover

Make useless things into useful, statement of anti-fashion shown on the last day of Haute Couture week, Chinese designer MA Ke staged on again in the green gardens of Palais Royal with her paradoxical concepts.

Theme: “Luxurious Qing Pin 奢侈的清贫”, which explains an immaterial statement of ancestral spirit.

Scene: One alley of the city’s Palais Royal gardens transformed into a fashion production chain straight out of rural China. The line went from boxes of cotton seed, to weavers and dyers, with people actually spinning and working looms, and on and on until the final product, modeled by a group “dancers” more like choreographic performance than a fashion show before departing in a single file.

Soundtrack: a wailing voice accompanied with water flow from time to time for half an hour from NA Ren, a Mongolian singner as well as the role of dyer on the scene.

Top models: from youth to grizzled middle aged, no frontier men and women.

The result, homespun loose fitting trousers, gathered skirts and big shirts, made up of naturally dyed and hand-woven pieces resembling functional earth tone garb worn by Chinese peasants, worked as a moment of far-flung fashion poetry.

To cloture the Paris Haute Couture week, MA Ke and her under-design “WUYONG” are obviously contrary to the rest of lavish and extravagance runways.

Buoyed by the success of her “Exception de Mixmind” label, which is sold in around 50 boutiques across China, she has launched her couture line, from 2006, “Wuyong” (which means “useless” in Chinese.) with her first exhibition last year on the Paris fashion week.