Steven Ma equipment designer brand name profile

Steven Ma: ‘We’re nevertheless keeping on to stereotypes, like guys are not able to carry purses’

With the common boundaries of gendered vogue more and more blurred, the unique issue of look at of Steven Ma, founder of an rising, gender-fluid accessory brand name based in London, is primed for results.

Ma, who hails from China but has expended a significant proportion of his daily life residing overseas in Australia, the United States and Europe, has delved into the inherent duality of his lived activities to make his eponymous brand name, offering a collection of leather-based components – ranging from handbags to footwear – that is developed on contrasts. Just about every style and design is a aware articulation of the rise up from normative benchmarks that Ma has embraced throughout his lifetime. The inaugural assortment is a highly effective research in the organic compared to the artifical, the ephemeral versus the long term, and other similarly opposing forces. 

A graduate of Parsons College of Design in New York, London-based Ma in the beginning planned to go on his reports in fashion small business in Paris, but dropped out once business insiders began paying out awareness to his models. Architectural in shape and adorned with normal semi-precious stones, his inaugural line of trapezoidal handbags, stacked-heel loafers and angular Chelsea boots with oversized soles provides an clear elevation to staples. Nonetheless, as design and style-driven as his creations are, they have their roots in spirituality and emotion. 

‘The initial style I created was influenced by the conflict I had in my marriage with my loved ones,’ suggests Ma. ‘From there, I realised that I want to have this label express my inner thoughts and my feelings in a actual physical structure. I also wanted to produce a community that would comprehend what style and design and a new concept of luxury was about, and [to encourage] emerging designers to not be frightened to express them selves. I want to split down the boundaries of conventional luxurious and produce superior quality, significant solutions.’

The starting up issue for Ma’s label was a challenging-case leather handbag – a person the brand’s signatures. Crystalline in framework and embracing all the idiosyncrasies of stones in the organic planet, the handbag’s irregular, extremely tactile façade has been 3D-printed and then wrapped in leather to guarantee a crisp and subtle end. Accomplished with a clasp inlaid with semi-precious stones, this kind of as malachite or sandstone, every sculptural bag oscillates among becoming a practical object and covetable work of art.

‘To me, it just seems funny that even right now in this period, we are even now holding on to stereotypes, like gentlemen are not able to dress in heels and simply cannot have purses’ – Steven Ma

‘Although I’m wondering of performance when I’m designing components, I also want to deliver spirit and electricity into the personal item because I see them being additional than just luggage,’ Ma claims. ‘That’s why, when I started off drawing the shapes, it was to represent just about every person’s partnership, no matter if it is your lover or your spouse and children, it is pretty stable and incredibly sturdy, but you will constantly have cracks due to the fact of conflicts. And these conflicts are essentially what tends to make every single relationship additional special and beautiful. That is what tends to make each and every of us diverse. And then we turn out to be much better. Which is why I place this semi-important stone involving the two bricks to depict the variation concerning two folks.’

Even though he identifies as male, Ma suggests that there are no boundaries when it comes to what he wears. In that spirit, the label’s very first collection attributes new twists on traditional shapes, like loafers, Mary-Jane shoes, and boots, which will be out there in both of those men’s and women’s dimensions. ‘To me, it just appears amusing that even today in this era, we are still holding on to stereotypes, like guys simply cannot put on heels and can not have purses,’ suggests Ma. 

Built in Italy alongside with the luggage, the footwear assortment’s types and silhouettes are equally directional, and comprehensive this initial foray into Ma’s earth. The label’s powerful union of individuality, spirituality and luxury is set to seize a more substantial viewers before long also – an e-commerce web-site launches afterwards this thirty day period. §