Mary Ping

Full Bio

Mary Ping

Mary Ping is a New York based designer with an art background from Vassar College. In 2001, she launched her eponymous collection, and in 2002 she started her conceptual line, Slow and Steady Wins the Race. She is a winner of the 2017 Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Award, the Ecco Domani Award, and UPS Future of Fashion. Her work is part of the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Museum at FIT in New York, the RISD Museum, Deste Foundation in Greece, and the Fondation d’entreprise Galeries Lafayette in Paris. Ping is a member of the Council of Fashion Designers of America.

Portrait photo by Joyce Ravid.

Slow and Steady Wins the Race is a conceptual clothing and accessory line that reinterprets the classical everyday wardrobe. It is built on the belief that high design can be, and should be, accessible to all.

Slow and Steady Wins the Race asks: What do we wear, why do we wear it, and how can we create new classics that are timely and timeless, unique yet universal? The work is a logical dissection of fashion, an investigation into the basic elements of what we wear, and a considered response to the hyper-consumerist pace of fashion.

The intention is to push and produce interesting and significant pieces from the simplest fabrics and materials with a focus on the fundamental characteristics of clothing design while contributing a commentary on the anthropology of fashion.

The oeuvre serves as a living archive. Each piece, from the earliest to the most current, is still available today as a testament that good design is always relevant.

Each perennial collection originates from a sartorial category and introduces a fresh set of styles delivered at a regulated pace year-round. This accelerated pace goes against the usual seasonal schedule as a commentary on modern fashion’s temporal nature. This philosophy behind Slow and Steady Wins the Race breaks the rule that fashion must constantly change. The work is seasonless and proves that good design elicits both an intellectual and emotional response that is ageless, cross-cultural — boundless.