At Ro, indie designer Mary Ping marries design with purpose.
Must we understand fashion to be synonymous with speed? Mary Ping thinks not. In 2002 she founded the “conceptual design studio” Slow and Steady Wins the Race in New York, and made a splash early on with her send-ups of It bags in canvas, though her practice is extensive and includes product design as well as fashion.
Now Ping is getting the chance to explore that mission on a larger scale as the consulting creative director for Ro bags. Ro bags was founded in 1999 by architect Gene Miao and designer Yvonne Roe, who set up shop on East 10th Street, a location that reflected the downtown ethos of the brand. Despite fashion’s ongoing fascination with all things 1990s, Ping’s mission is not just to revive—or archive—Ro, but to create something new within a framework of an existing brand name.
One of Ping’s first steps in creating a new identity for Ro, was to look up the word in the dictionary, where she found not only a definition, but a mission. “It’s used to define a language that doesn’t exist and doesn’t have a category,” she explains.
Step one settled, step two was to carry over some of Slow and Steady Wins the Race’s values relating to sustainability and pricing, to reach a larger audience. Ping decided to work with upcycled factory remnants—“If you’re going to buy a new bag, why not buy one that has better practices?” she muses—and has been inspired by the challenge of “designing into those limitations.
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