How Phillip Lim Became an 'Accidental Activist'

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"An accidental activist". That's how Phillip Lim describes himself. Later, he edits this: "I just say to myself on."

But the "accidental" part, at least, could apply to much of Lim's life trajectory. He also considers himself "an accidental designer", having never attended fashion school. After moving to New York "on a whim" to date his friend Wen Zhou, who is now his business partner and the general manager of his brand, he spontaneously created what would become his 18-year-old label. . “I arrived on Friday; Monday morning we started 3.1 Phillip Lim,” he recalls. "I've always said, 'Why not? Let's just roll the dice. My decisions are made on the fly, but when I commit, I commit.'

On March 10, 2020, "three days before the announcement of a total shutdown", the designer, who is Chinese-American, made a new type of engagement: speaking out. He took to CNN to speak out against "what we were seeing on social media: Asian seniors being harassed, targeted and bullied." When host Brooke Baldwin first asked him to come on her show, he was initially reluctant. “I am not an activist. I am not part of the government. I'm kind of away from that,” he recalled thinking. “However, what I can talk about is who I see being bullied. And he looks like my dad, or my uncle, or people I know in my community. Another thing that made him raise his voice: "The former president was using the highest platform in the land to scapegoat an entire community over a virus that had nothing to do with race. "

Lim attends the Fashion Trust US Awards Ceremony.

At first, Lim says, he felt acute impostor syndrome. “People come to me for fashion advice and hemming, but at that point I figured 80% of my business is this community. It was the most vulnerable elders: all my seamstresses, my tailors, all the Asian women that worked with me… and it was like, “What kind of superman or superwoman are we waiting for? to be our own superheroes, to figure out how we can take a stand. With friends he started the