Beyond The Fringe

Beijing-born designer Masha Ma is on the fast track, opening stores at a rapid rate in China and showing her clothes at Paris Fashion Week.

- Mark Graham

ONCE SEEN, MASHA MA is never forgotten. The designer has a floppy, over-the-face fringe that has become a talked-about feature on Chinese social media, to the extent that there is even a hashtag, #halffacecovergirl.

As a media-savvy millennial, Ma encourages fans to post their own versions of her eye-obscuring fringe, a procedure that also allows her direct contact with people who buy her clothes. But, as she cheerfully admits, there are those who find the constant fringe flicking rather irritating. When meeting Ma, a naturally cheery and garrulous character, it can be distracting to have every answer accompanied by a shake of the head, or a sweep of the hand, to move the damn fringe out of the way.

“It’s a love or hate thing, I don’t think you’ll find so much neutral or middle ground,” laughs Ma with – inevitably – a toss of the fringe.“People hashtag me when they have a similar hairstyle and for fun I’ll choose one every week and repost it. Hundreds of people are doing it; some are shy so they send me messages on Weibo, or Wechat, rather than posting it, [but] they want me to see it.

“It started when I was very young, I didn’t want to have a boring hairstyle with an ordinary fringe, or be cutesy. I was never a pretty girl when I was young so I wanted to cover my face and then I got lazy and it got longer and one day it stayed longer and I realised it was a hairstyle and a way of people recognising me. It also helped in Europe where people often think that Asians look alike – they definitely remember me!”