Ponder.er’s Derek Cheng and Alex Po redefine masculinity with smocking and sheer fabrics.
Masculinity. One would usually associate it with traits such as toughness, independence, and courage. However, masculinity comprises of an even wider spectrum of qualities and expressions of which Derek Cheng and Alex Po are striving to demonstrate through gender-fluid label Ponder.er. The two have been designing androgynous menswear since their days at Central Saint Martins before establishing Ponder.er in 2019. Within five years, Ponder.er has gained a cult following thanks to its subversive, inclusive styles, which earned them the Yu Prize x Li-Ning Grand Award in 2022, the top honour celebrating Chinese fashion pioneers. That same year also saw them named as one of the 10 Asian Designers to Watch by Fashion Asia Hong Kong, and in 2024, Ponder.er earned a spot in the semi-finals of the LVMH Prize.
MANIFESTO: What inspired you to start a brand together?
DEREK CHENG: We noticed something at Shanghai Fashion Week. Even though it was exciting to see a new wave of young talents entering the scene, not a lot of them addressed gender-related topics. In general, Asian societies seem to have overlooked these matters. For instance, everyone talks about feminism but not a lot of people are aware that men actually need help too…
ALEX PO: Gender fluidity is a key theme as well as our selling point. This topic is relatively complicated but we still want to champion an unorthodox definition of masculinity.
M: Did some of your personal experiences inspire you to use masculinity as Ponder.er’s key theme?
AP: Yeah! My entire graduate collection had a pastel palette. Pink, baby blue, yellow… In the U.K., people think it’s cute when men wear pink. My masters’ dissertation was about pink and masculinity. I showed it to my family and friends in Hong Kong. They were surprised and asked me “Why would men wear pink?” I was like “Why not?” These conversations made me realise that those who have a traditional mindset tend to set boundaries for what men should or should not wear.
DC: This mindset has existed till this day and age, and has left men with very few options to choose from.
M: How would you describe the association between Ponder.er’s signature smocking detailing and gender-fluidity?
AP: In the beginning, we started off with a shirt called Hug. It is a large men’s shirt. We wanted to liquify it and later discovered the technique of smocking which is often used in womenswear and kidswear. It shrinks the garment and makes the wearers feel like it’s hugging them.
DC: Another thing we find interesting is that smocking was invented a long time ago. Back in the days, there wasn’t any elasticated material and very few garment sizes were offered, so people used this technique to make clothes that can fit different body shapes. At the time, the detailing wasn’t gendered. Nowadays, smocking has somehow become something feminine. As gender structures started to form, these shrunken pieces were said to only look nice on women. But smocking wasn’t created for a specific gender in the first place!
M: What experiences do you aspire to create for the wearer and the viewer of the brand’s pieces?
AP: I think it requires one to put some thought into styling Ponder.er pieces.
DC: That’s why it’s called Ponder.er though!
AP: Not everyone can understand what the brand is straight away but we hope our pieces can seamlessly blend into the day-to-day and character of wearers, instead of dominating the other pieces.
DC: Frankly speaking, this way of thinking raises difficulties for sales. Many showrooms would ask us, “Which brands should we place Ponder.er with?” Because you need to belong to a category to make it easier for clients to understand. But we don’t want to give definitions to everything we make. We actually want the customers to let us know how they view Ponder.er.
M: See-through textiles are often used in Ponder.er’s garments, installations and presentations. What does this translucence symbolise?
AP: We wanted to convey the softness and vulnerability of men by liquifying traditionally bold menswear silhouettes with soft sheer fabrics.
DC: We wanted to talk about the female version of the male gaze. Women wear see-through pieces, revealing parts of their chest, arms… What effect would it create or what comments would men receive if they wear clothes with translucent detailing? This gaze has become the talk of the town because more and more male celebrities wear audacious outfits, so I think it is time for the society or our industry to normalise gender-fluid styling.
M: How would you describe the power of softness?
DC: There is so much power and strength lying within softness and vulnerability. Openly talking about your weaknesses requires so much courage.
AP: I think the confidence comes from realising one’s weaknesses. No one is perfect. One would also hope that by talking about one’s own weaknesses, it could encourage others to do the same.
M: Starting off with lightweight textiles, how did a contrastingly heavyweight denim become the cornerstone of your more recent collections?
DC: We drew so much inspiration from how mass media portray different genders. Some brands used to portray a fixed old American look that is closely related to denim. These images had a huge influence on us when we were little. We would think that a very masculine man has to wear a pair of very masculine jeans. This (stereotype) is why we wanted to look into denim in the first place.
M: How would you describe the creative community in Hong Kong?
DC: We receive so much love and support from the creative community in Hong Kong. Though to a certain extent, everyone is competing with each other for funding and a larger audience, we acknowledge that we are all doing very different things and we help each other by sharing our connections and knowledge.
AP: The creative community in Hong Kong is very small and so it’s tight. No kidding, we always hang out with our fellows. In Hong Kong, if you speak Cantonese, you can easily bond with any Cantonese speaker, because Hong Kong is a small city and what we all experience is pretty similar, so it’s not hard to understand each other.
M: Tell us more about your experience at the LVMH Prize.
AP: It makes us rethink about many things we do with Ponder.er. It was around 11 o’clock at night. We were making the line sheet when we received a call from France. Derek somehow answered the call even though we were in a meeting.
DC: It’s rare to get a call from Europe so I was curious. (Laughs)
AP: Then we found out we entered the semi-finals. We were shocked but happy. This is a really good platform, whether or not we win.
DC: What I find interesting is that the 20 semi-finalists all started their brands around the same time — right before the pandemic. The struggles we experienced were similar. Talking to industry experts and other participants made us reflect on different things and inspired many ideas for Ponder.er’s future developments.
AP: The styles and journeys of the 20 semi-finalists are so different from each other’s but we all ended up in the semi-finals. We realised that our path doesn’t have to be conventional and fixed. There are too many things to experiment with, to explore and too many ways to build our own path.
(MANIFESTO / Text by Marco Lee)
