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Designer Phillip Lim hasn’t held a fashion show since 2019. What has he learned in the four years since?
“I’m going to say it point blank. You must show,” he says, speaking the morning after 3.1 Phillip Lim’s return on 10 September during New York Fashion Week. The show, held in a space in Chinatown, was a high-energy love letter to the city. Celebrity guests including Awkwafina, Stephanie Hsu and Leon Bridges, plus fellow New York designers Prabal Gurung and Laura Kim, were in attendance, while a big crowd formed outside. Possibly, they thought the advertisements around the city that read “Meet me on Bowery and Canal” meant the show would take place outside. Rather, it was more a reintroduction to the brand and for the 3.1 Phillip Lim team, an emotional one.
“I’m not a crier. I’m really tough. But my tears were like rain showers; they just kept coming throughout the day. It was four years pent up, trying to hold it together for everyone. My brand, the community, social justice, everything that transformed me,” Lim says. “What felt right about coming back was that fact that the show is important. It’s a tremendous vehicle. All eyes are on you.”
Lim didn’t always feel this way about the runway. When he stopped showing in 2019, it was because he suddenly — then 14 years in — found it empty and mindless, he says. “You could see everyone trying to outdo each other. It wasn’t a community — it was pure spectacle. It lost the soul to me.” In lieu of a show in September 2020, Lim held a small event for core customers. Then the pandemic took the decision out of it: shows were off, and the brand had to focus solely on staying afloat.
3.1 Phillip Lim, founded in 2005 by Lim and longtime business partner and brand CEO Wen Zhou, is an independent brand and has never taken external funding. The brand doesn’t share revenue figures but is profitable, says Zhou. “Some years more than others, but we’re expecting a very profitable 2024.” The biggest change the brand has made to its model over the years is a steady shift toward direct-to-consumer sales, something that’s now common in the industry but expensive for independent brands to do. DTC sales now account for 30 per cent of the business, and Zhou says she anticipates that to reach 50 per cent by the end of 2024, with wholesale still being “the backbone of the business”.
“Coming back [to NYFW] gave us authority and maturity. Maybe it’s the maturity of age, but we don’t give a fuck anymore,” says Zhou. “Let’s have fun and remind each other why we’re here and why we choose to be here because it’s certainly not the easiest. We’re not looking to attract buyers or trying to sell or market to them. We want to build our community.”
The brand has two stores in the US as well as a significant footprint in Asia, across China, Thailand, Korea and Japan. It’s sold through retailers including Saks, Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, Ssense and Net-a-Porter. The collection, Lim says, is designed to be versatile, for the woman going to Pilates and power lunches — the New York uniform. For SS24, denim and khaki were paired with soft lavender chiffon and floral prints, plus handbags of all sizes. Zhou says she’s looking at shoes and accessories as two categories that will drive that growth in particular. A modern take on the traditional Chinese slipper was a focal point of the new collection.
The brand is ambitious but wants to grow intentionally. Lim says he would take investment from the right partners who are in it for the long haul, something Zhou echoes, and she notes that “when the right one comes along, we will know.” To be independent in today’s fashion industry is “scary as hell, tough as hell”, Lim says. But scale isn’t everything: “You can be more profitable as a $10 million brand than a $100 million brand.”
Nearing 20 years old, 3.1 Phillip Lim is part of a contingency of New York fashion brands founded in the mid-2000s that have managed to stick around without being acquired, like Altuzarra — something that’s become more difficult even as promising new designers are welcomed with enthusiasm each season. What is New York doing to support young talent?
“Not enough,” says Lim, particularly when designers are yet to be fully established but are no longer the freshest names on the schedule. “In the beginning, you get all the accolades. We have to rethink this, the way we think about the next big thing. How we nurture potential talent and not call it prodigy. It’s amazing to identify potential, but there’s too much pressure that comes with that. You’re looked at like, ‘You could make us a gazillion dollars, kid’ — instead, it should be, ‘We would like to nurture you.’ That’s how you build something that sustains.”
It seems clear he’s thinking of Peter Do, the New York designer whose debut as creative director at Helmut Lang (which is owned by Japanese retail giant and Uniqlo parent Fast Retailing) was one of the most anticipated shows of the season. Lim has mentored the 32-year-old Do. “He can make the clothes and cut that mean jacket, but he’s never experienced parts of the business that will affect that tailoring. That’s the hard part that designers don’t know about — the dollars and cents. Creativity makes business, but business affords creativity,” Lim says. “I’m so proud of him. I hope people give him the grace of time.”
Fashion is not known for giving designers time to grow into highly visible roles, just as New York Fashion Week isn’t known for holding attention on new designers for long. “Fashion is so quick to move on,” says Zhou. “I want to savour this. And then use this platform and momentum to scale the business.” Will the brand again be a permanent fixture on the NYFW calendar? “When it feels right, we’ll do it,” says Zhou. “We’re independent, and we can enjoy that freedom.”
Lim wants more brands to be able to grow with that freedom. “New York needs to create space for these small independent brands. The big titans started as small brands, too,” he says, acknowledging that the industry will always be searching for the next Ralph Lauren, the next billion-dollar brand. He says designers should focus instead on their own definition of success.
“You need to start with yourself and what you want to be,” he says. “But you have to walk away from the buffet at a certain point.”
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