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The eyes of fate Les Yeux du Destin
Le Parisien Sunday, June 15, 2008
Portrait of the Week Lesson of courage from a blind fashion designer As the national conference for the disabled took place last Tuesday, Mason Ewing, age 26, is already seen as a symbol. A blind fashion designer, from his modest apartment in Meaux (Seine-et-Marne region), he has fought to show the world that his tortured childhood was not an obstacle to his ascent. Made blind at age 14 by mistreatment, today, he uses Braille labels on his creations to describe the design’s color and motif. His designs are ready, he just needs to find boutiques where to sell them. For that reason, Mason created Ewing Enterprises, with a fashion branch, a literature branch and, just created this year, a branch consecrated to television. But the young man has come a long way. Before working in fashion, he lived in hell. He was called Cyril Elong, the name of his mother. “My aunt rubbed my eyes with spice” The Principal of La Ferte-sous-Jouarre High School remembers him as an unstable student and runaway child in 1995: “He complained of mistreatment, which I reported. He was placed in a home.” The Committee Against Modern Slavery took him under its wing. In 2004, his aunt Jeannette and uncle Lucien Ekwalla were condemned for mistreatment by the court of Meaux to 15 months of prison, with a suspended sentence for time served. They took Mason in at the age of 7, after the death of his mother who was a model, before inflicting him with real torture on a daily basis. “When I wet my bed, my aunt put hot spice on my genitals to make me stop. She also rubbed the spice in my eyes. That’s why I became blind at age 14. Mason started to run away at age 11, he went to tell his story of abuse to police stations in the Parisian region. “Each time, I was sent back to my aunt. I became crazy. Once, I even escaped and made it to Dijon.” He was punished each day, for no reason. He had to get on his knees, extend his arms and hold stones or books. “My aunt lit a lighter under my arms, if I lowered them, I was burned. At Christmas, I didn’t get any gifts, I made snowmen from paper, I would escape by reading.” The trial will recognize his suffering. But no possible compensation. “I am still mad, justice should have sent them to prison for the harm they did to me. My aunt and my uncle live peacefully in Seineet-Marne.” At the time of the judgment, Anne-Sophie Martin, journalist from “Secrets of History” on channel M6, proposed him to write his story, which still waits for an editor today. “This boy is extraordinary, he has the potential for an exceptional life. Without education or family support, his life is constructed through his encounters,” she assesses. In September 2006, he presented his first clothing collection in Paris, which was filmed by France 2 for the 1 pm newscast. The fashion show ended with a wedding dress in homage of his mother. Today, the creator features “Madison” on his T-shirts, a cosmopolitan baby which he invented, which is mixed race and blond, with large blue eyes. “It’s a mix of children from the entire world, and represents tolerance, universality and hope,” explains Mason. His production company will film a medium-length film against drugs in July, with Marylou Berry (Josiane Balasko’s daughter) and Muriel Combeau, who plays Gladys Dupre in the series “Lawyers and Associates.” The actress had a special feeling for him at first sight. “He is seductive and exerts a beautiful energy. He got out of a monstrous story with the desire to go forward, without pitying himself of his fate. He is so enthusiastic.” “I achieved the dream of my mother” Mason spends his time contacting sponsors, actors, athletes. On May 21st, he spent two hours with Luc Besson. The director is reviewing his requests. “ I would like him to publish my autobiography and to help me develop my collections,” confides Mason. Other personalities have heard his story, like Maurice Douala, former soccer play from Monaco. The President of the Committee of the struggle against modern slavery
introduced him to fashion designer Olivier Lapidus, who has become his mentor in the world of fashion (read below). “He gave me food to eat when I was struggling. He’s a fantastic mentor, very human.” The fashion designer presented him to L’Agfiph*, a public service association which gave him 20,000 euros for his fashion show and creation of his enterprise. Today, Mason has proved that his disability and his suffering have created his strength. Meanwhile, he never rests, sleeping three to four hours per night. When his anger subsides, he will fly to Cameroon and place flowers on his mother’s grave. He invokes her memory everywhere he goes. “I fulfilled her dream by creating the collections.” As for his American father, not a word. “He lives in the United States and never was concerned about me…” - VALENTINE ROUSSEAU * Association of Fund Management for the Professional Integration of the Disabled. To contact Mason Ewing: ewingenterprises@gmail.com Picture caption: MEAUX (SEINE-ET-MARNE), YESTERDAY. Blind since age 14, fashion designer Mason Ewing affixes a cosmopolitan baby with a label in Braille on his T-shirts, describing the clothing. “He is an example for the disabled” OLIVIER LAPIDUS, fashion designer who mentored Mason Ewing Mason Ewing met Olivier Lapidus ten years ago, in total destitution. The designer has never let him go since then. “Mason is wonderful for two reasons. His extraordinary tenacity and the example he sets for the disabled. He can open the way to new professions and new norms for the disabled.” Olivier Lapidus admires Mason’s energy and characterizes him as “resilient.” The young man knew how to transform his sufferings into a vital force. “We are equal when facing work in life, when creating something, you must know how to surpass the handicap. It’s already very difficult to make it in the fashion world when one is qualified. Through him, society can change its vision of the handicapped.” The fashion designer wants to remain in the shadows, discreet about the help that he gives to Mason, to not “pollute his success.” He hopes there will be a Mason law, which will encourage the textile industries to write the size and color in Braille on labels. “A visually impaired person should be able to coordinate his clothes like anyone else.” BRIEF BIO - Sept. 9, 1982: birth in Douala, Cameroon. - 1986: death of his mother Marie. - Jan. 1989: arrival in France, in Val-de-Marne, then in Seine-et-Marne. - 1996: he loses his sight. - 1998: meets Olivier Lapidus, his mentor. - June 20, 2004: condemnation of his aunt and uncle. - Sept. 20, 2006: fashion show in Paris, at the Vianey salon where he unveils his baby Madison, and the wedding dress in homage of his mother. - Jan. 8, 2007: creation of Ewing Enterprises. - 2008: three medium-length films in process.
Le monde September 20, 2006
Mason Ewing: Life As He Sees It In his childhood, he lost everything, even his sight. He decided to become a fashion designer and will launch his first fashion show on Wednesday. Mason Ewing speaks quickly. Very quickly. He swallows his words, impatient to go on to the next subject. We need to ask him to repeat his sentences. That annoys him. He breathes heavily, and grudgingly starts over. He doesn’t have any time to lose. So much wasted life, so much to catch up on. He is 24 years old, and has been pursuing a dream for a long time: to pay homage to his mother. She passed away when he was 3 years old, in Cameroon. She was a model. She was beautiful. She was black. Mason Ewing is born from her union with a white American businessman from California. She died at age 20. “Victim of a premeditated murder,” he states without watering down his words. He knows almost nothing about her, his father or his African family. His childhood is a black hole. He only survived in the hope of making a gift for his deceased mother one day: become a fashion designer and organize a fashion show. For her. He waited such a long time. And the time has come. Fashion designer Mason Ewing’s first fashion show will take place Wednesday September 20th in the salons of 98 Quai de la Rapee, in Paris. The content is a mystery. The creator’s “surprise.” A “Marie-Antoinette style wedding dress, with a 26 foot long train,” and conceived in memory of his mother. He is immersed in excitement and anxiety. What Mason Ewing grudgingly tries to say is his particularity. He is both fashion designer and blind. “Visually impaired,” he corrects, vexed. “Why always ask me questions about my sight?” he adds while staring at you, almost spot on, his eyes wide open. In his apartment in a housing project in Meaux (Seine-et-Marne region), the TV is turned on. Mason “watches,” as he says, an episode of his favorite soap opera “The Young and Restless.” He’s constantly looking at papers and photos. He knows hundreds of phone numbers by heart, can recite newspaper articles, can give dates and pages from memory. Friends come by, some give him a helping hand, carried away by his extraordinary energy. “We are an army of people that work for him,” says one of his “godmothers,” journalist Dominique Torres, co-founder and former President of the Committee Against Modern Slavery. “ Because he is deeply moving. Because he is one of a kind. And nothing will stop him.” Because everything in Mason Ewing’s short life was destined to make him disappear. Three years after the death of his mother, Lucien and Jeanette Ekwalla, Mason’s great-uncle and great-aunt, came to get him in Douala, the economic capital of Cameroon. They lived in France. At age 6, Mason, took a plane for the first time. He imagined that France is in the sky, that he will see his mother through the small window. But, when he landed in the suburbs of Paris, paradise wasn’t waiting for him. He was obliged to do housework. Sequestered, tortured, burned, beaten. His uncle preferred belts (buckle side), his aunt liked wooden sticks, when she didn’t hit the infant’s head against the bathtub. Black skin and frizzy hair have this advantage: the blows can’t be seen. At school, his only moment of deliverance, Mason, terrorized, doesn’t say anything about his life. To punish this child who wet his bed at night – he even slept on the ground without a blanket - the aunt threw a mixture of spices on his genitals. The mixture is used in the bathroom. She regularly put it in his eyes. The “spice torture” is a custom practiced in some African families, generally in the vagina of young sinners. Mason loses his sight a few years later, at the age of 15. After running away numerous times, the police or social workers of the DDASS (Dept. of Health and Social Security) picked him up... and quickly alerted his uncle and aunt.
Nobody believed Mason Ewing. So much cruelty, so much suffering. The Committee Against Modern Slavery listened to him. In June 2004, Lucien and Jeannette Ekwalla were each condemned by the criminal court in Meaux to 15 months of prison with a suspended sentence for time served and 4500 euros of damages for “deprivation of care or food” and “violent voluntary acts by placing a mixture of spices in the eyes or on the genitals.” Jeannette spent one and a half years in prison during the inquiry. Lucien managed to escape. A ridiculous and ludicrous punishment, as in most cases of domestic slavery. “I was disgusted,” says Mason. He would like to turn the page. Erase the stigmas of the past, this disability that he denies with all his strength. He has a stack of dozens of DVD’s next to the television. “Once free, I bought all that I had been deprived of seeing on TV in my childhood, cartoons or silly shows. To catch up on what my school friends talked to me about, all that I never had,” he says. He decided to become a fashion designer. Always looking for his lost paradise, of light, beauty, radiance. “In my dream, fashion is one of the most beautiful riches that my mother left me. When I was young, I adored fashion shows, I made a lot of drawings, I cut out photos of models from the magazines and filled files with them,” explains Mason. Dominique Torres was concerned, “Why choose the only profession that you can’t do?” Fashion designer Olivier Lapidus, who is his mentor, advised him “To find a model of enterprise which corresponds to your disability.” Mason listened to him. He bought jeans and T-shirts on which he affixed decorative motifs and labels in Braille. He designed his logo, the M and E letters intertwined, “in a very elegant gray.” And a mascot, with a less happy aesthetic, meant to represent the brand: a big cosmopolitan baby who’s mixed-race, with big blue eyes and a pacifier in the mouth. A designer friend scrupulously followed his instructions. A dress designer sewed the wedding dress. In what manner does he see? The question annoys Mason. “I saw in my life. I know beauty.” As Mason Ewing does nothing half way, he founded Ewing Enterprises. In his wounded imagination, it would be a holding company like in Dallas, which would resemble an agency of cheerleaders, another would train models and now an office of fashion designers under the Mason Ewing brand. This Wednesday’s fashion show will set down the first building block in his enterprise. The boss of Ewing Enterprises promises: “The dress is so beautiful, you’ll see!” - Marion Van Renterghem
Los angeles times april 22, 2012
Mason Ewing, blinded at 15, is successful as a fashion designer in Paris. Now he wants to create a teen comedy and a dramatic series for television.
H
e’s been blind since age 15. But nobody can say that Mason Ewing lacks vision. Overcoming a nightmarish childhood, Ewing, 30, has been a successful fashion designer in Paris.
For the last six months, however, his mind has been set on Hollywood, where he hopes to create a teen comedy and a dramatic series for television. Born in Cameroon to an American father and a Cameroonian mother and raised in France, his own life has been filled with drama. His mother, a seamstress and dressmaker, was murdered when Ewing was 4, he said. As an older child, Ewing remembers watching fashion shows and seeing glamorous top models like Naomi Campbell on the catwalk.
«I decided to work in fashion and follow in my mother’s footsteps,» he recalls.
Separated from his father, he lived for a time with a great-grandmother in Cameroon. But, Ewing said, his life took a dark turn at age 6 when he was sent to stay with relatives near Paris. He remembers being routinely beaten and abused for seven years. He was whipped with belts, his arms were burned by candles, and he was forced to stand with his arms extended as he held heavy books in his hands, he says. «I lived with my uncle and aunt and they began to fight me. They would awaken me at 4 in the morning to clean the house and wash dishes. When I wet the bed in fear, they took my head and bashed it on the bathtub,» he recalled. «They poked my eyes and put pigment in them.» Ewing was bashed and kicked in the head so often that he suffered a seizure that landed him in the hospital, where, he said, he was in a coma for three weeks. When he awoke, he was blind. The «pigment» Ewing mentioned is actually a peppery African hot sauce, according to a friend and associate, Raffael Becker, who translates for him. He said Ewing is convinced that the spicy hot sauce is to blame «for burning his optic nerves and killing the cells of his eyes.»
«I don’t know why they did this to me,» Ewing said. «It was just wickedness.»
French authorities eventually intervened and placed young Ewing in a series of foster homes. He studied physical therapy in college before deciding in 2001 to pursue his childhood dream of fashion design.
His Parisian fashion styling work ranged from evening gowns to Braille-lettered T- shirts.
Translating what Ewing could see only in his mind’s eye was a challenge. He was able to recruit artists willing to sketch the designs he described, including an elaborate «Marie Antoinette» gown — a flowing, billowing dress accented with swoops of golden-brocaded fabric. Able to see only vague combinations of light and shadow, Ewing discovered his blindness had enhanced his ability to distinguish the textures of silks, lace, linen and cotton twill. That feel for material also came into play when doll-size miniatures of his creations were sewn together and he was able to «see» his designs by touch. Although other fledgling young designers of haute couture voiced skepticism of Ewing’s chances of succeeding in the design world, a French organization for the handicapped, Agefiph, decided to finance his first fashion show in 2006, according to print and television reports. Since then, Ewing has produced a collection of T-shirts that feature Baby Madison, a multi-ethnic cartoon figure, in different settings. The infant has dark skin, blue eyes and a tuft of blond hair that «represents tolerance and love for everyone,» he said. The shirts’ raised Braille lettering tells him the garment’s color and what Madison image is printed on it. Ewing used the cartoon character to branch out into video animation with «The Adventures of Madison.» He hopes to parlay that into two TV series that feature live actors. Test scenes for the teen drama «Eryna Bella» have been shot in South Los Angeles’ Vermont Square neighborhood, where Ewing rents a small house. «It’s about high school beauty queens competing for the attention of the campus alpha male,» he said.
His proposed teen comedy series is called «Mickey Boom.»
Mary E. Fry, a producer and casting director for independent films who is assisting Ewing and his young actors, said what he is planning is doable. «I grew up in an era of Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder and I know what they’ve accomplished,» Fry said. «He’ll have people at his side that are his eyes and ears. His biggest challenge is getting investors in line.»
Ewing is confident he can triumph in another visual arts field.
«There are a lot of people who are handicapped and they’re able to do a lot of things that people don’t necessarily think they can do,» he said. Bob Pool
News one august 27, 2012
Blind, African-Born French Designer Hopes To Make It Big In Hollywood It is hard enough for most established Frenchmen and women to earn a passing glance of consideration from the elite and fiercely competitive French fashion industry. And if you are a poor, blind African immigrant, that passing glance that even a native-born French designer would appreciate can instantly narrow to a suspicious side-eye. Mason Ewing (pictured in Los Angeles) says he has experienced many of those side-eyes since he stepped foot on French soil some 10 years ago with runway dreams of designing the hottest dresses, blouses and designer jeans for the world’s premiere models. But he has recently uprooted his Parisian runway dreams and replanted them in American soil. Hollywood to be exact. The U.S. has traditionally been viewed as the “Land Of Opportunity.” But Ewing, through his interpreter, Renato Salvatori, told NewsOne that America has proven to be more like the “Land Of Equality” for him. “I have been in the media quite often in France, but that has not opened any doors for me,” Ewing said during a phone interview. “When I asked for sponsorships and partnerships, they tell me, “Oh, we don’t have money. But I find that in the United States, it doesn’t matter if you Black, White Chinese. In France, if you are Black, it is more difficult than if you are a (White) Frenchman or woman.” During his time in southern California, Ewing has been working on a television series that is an extension of his fashion goals. Here is a rundown of the show, as reported by the Los Angeles Times: Since then (2006), Ewing has produced a collection of T-shirts that feature Baby Madison, a multi-ethnic cartoon figure, in different settings. The infant has dark skin, blue eyes and a tuft of blond hair that “represents tolerance and love for everyone,” he said. The shirts’ raised Braille lettering tells him the garment’s color and what Madison image is printed on it. Ewing used the cartoon character to branch out into video animation with “The Adventures of Madison.” He hopes to parlay that into two TV series that feature live actors. Test scenes for the teen drama “Eryna Bella” have been shot in South Los Angeles’ Vermont Square neighborhood, where Ewing rents a small house. “It’s about high school beauty queens competing for the attention of the campus alpha male,” he said. His proposed teen comedy series is called “Mickey Boom.” Though a network has not offered to run either of his series, Ewing is grateful that he is being given a shot to give it a try. Ewing told NewsOne that when he wasn’t enduring racism in France, he was facing down inyour-face discrimination. “When I went to a bank to ask for a business loan, one of the representatives told me that they cannot lend
me money because I am blind,” he said. “A lot of banks closed their doors on me.” As previously reported by NewsOne, Ewing endured a harsh childhood in his native Cameroon. He told the L.A. Times that he was sent to live near Paris with relatives at the age of six. Ewing says that they beat him regularly for seven years. The height of the abuse came when he says he was beaten so badly that he was hospitalized for three weeks. At age fifteen, he left the hospital permanently blind. “I don’t know why they did this to me,” Ewing told the L.A. Times. “It was just wickedness.” French authorities eventually interviewed and placed him a several foster homes. But those brutal experiences did not stop him from becoming pursuing his childhood dream of becoming a fashion designer. He makes his clothing by instructing trained designers on how he wants a particular garment to look. His colleagues are amazed in his ability to to tell the difference between silk, fur and other materials.