PHILLIP LIM
META MAG Co-Founders Joy Chen and Tiffany Hue sat down with 3.1 Phillip Lim's co-founder and creative director, Phillip Lim to discuss the idea of resilience, and how it relates to the Asian American identity, community, and the collective strength we have to create change.
3.1 Phillip Lim is a New York-based eponymous fashion label crafted by Thai-Chinese American designer, Phillip Lim. The brand explores the timeless sophistication of classic ready-to-wear pieces you know and love, from loungewear essentials to elegant footwear. Their most recent 0.2 Capsule Collection is available now at 31philliplim.com.
As a proud Asian American creative, Lim has continuously used his platform to vocalize the injustices of anti-Asian hate crimes. The designer has been a member of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) since 2007, and he has pushed the collective to publicly condemn the violent xenophobia placed against Asian Americans in the community.
With his brand’s global success and initiative to move towards a better future, Lim implements resilience in all avenues of 3.1 Phillip Lim.
See the full interview in our third issue, RESILIENCE.
Q: What does resilience mean to you? How does resilience play into your brand and what you create?
A: I am proud of our resilience, strength and the way that we have found our collective voice as a community even though tragedy is what brought this movement on. Seeing the AAPI community stand up together against the vicious hate crimes and creating a massive movement with #STOPASIANHATE has been so inspiring to me and instills such pride.
I hope that we start moving forward to a new beginning, a new way of co-existing together. Together, we're trying to bring the whole spectrum, because it requires this type of unity. We are a community becoming. And to become, to end this violence, the silence really has to end.
We have to continue to create. This is who we are. Throughout history, whenever there were pivotal moments, it was always because of people creating, people pushing against, people fighting out of necessity. They'd invent something new or there'd be a new way of thinking, way of being. I pivot the creativity on different subjects whether it be cooking, planting, books to read, just different ways of engaging. It's all part of that creative conversation.