Last month, the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum honored Mary Ping with the National Design Award for Fashion for Slow and Steady Wins the Race.
It was a big moment – Slow and Steady Wins the Race joined a list of a past recipients including fellow CFDA designers and brands Tom Ford, Yeohlee Teng, Toledo Studio, Rick Owens, Francisco Costa for Calvin Klein Collection, Rodarte, J. Mendel, Thom Browne, Behnaz Sarafpour, and Narciso Rodriguez.
The New York-based designer launched the winning collection in 2002, and has since become part of the permanent collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Museum at F.I.T., the R.I.S.D. Museum, Deste Foundation, and the Fondation d’entreprise Galeries Lafayette. As she heads to Washington, D.C. for a cocktail reception and conversation with some of the other 2017 winners, we asked her to elaborate on the honor and her design philosophy.
What does design mean to you?
True design integrity is undeniable in its presence and purpose. It is what makes our foundation. Design has the power to be timely and timeless, unique and universal, ageless and cross-cultural. As a living archive and now best represented as a thesaurus of wearable design, Slow and Steady Wins the Race will continue to focus on the fundamentals of clothing and accessory design while making a commentary on the cultural anthropology of fashion, dress and function.
What is your design philosophy for Slow and Steady Wins the Race?
Timely and timeless, unique and universal, created with conceptual clarity – these best describe our design philosophy. The work is a continuous investigation into the elements of what we wear, how we wear it, and why. Each collection also contains a commentary on the cultural anthropology of modern fashion, focusing on the fundamental characteristics of design within a wardrobe. The body of work aims to distill fashion to its most indispensable and empirical elements. Slow and Steady Wins the Race is seasonless and proves that good design elicits both an intellectual and emotional response that is ageless, cross-cultural, sustainable—and boundless.
How would you say has your aesthetic evolved in the past decade?
The aesthetic over the years has remained unchanged, but we always aim higher when it comes to quality and consideration.
How does fashion fit into the overall design category?
To quote the museum’s mission, design is seen and celebrated “as a vital humanistic tool in shaping the world, and seeks to increase national awareness of design by educating the public and promoting excellence, innovation, and lasting achievement”, and fashion today is perhaps the most easily accessed by people.
If you could be a designer in a non-fashion category, what would it be and why?
Instead of designing items that are part of a wardrobe, I would most likely be designing an actual wardrobe or similar tools related. I was always the kid in class who was most interested in putting all the pieces together and then questioning the how and the why they all fit.
What was your reaction when you learned you were a recipient of the National Design Award?
I literally took a photo of the caller I.D. on my landline in the studio. Luckily, I had studio members who witnessed my reaction so I was not alone in imagining it.
I’m still floored and honored. Slow and Steady Wins the Race started 15 years ago with a design mission that is somewhat antithetical to today’s fashion system. We are much more fascinated with balancing the timeliness with timelessness, concepts with longevity — at the speed we are moving at, this really feels like we are the tortoise winning. The impact of this award is significant as it reaffirms the bones of our design system- our ten values of utility, integrity, simplicity, curiosity, materiality, care, concept, quality and longevity.
