Phillip Lim walks onto the stage amid cheers and rounds of applause. At first glance, he seems relatively unassuming, dressed in a stunning double-breasted blazer, presumably his own work. Lim is at SCAD accepting the prestigious Étoile Award, an accolade SCAD and President Paula Wallace present to one noteworthy designer in the fields of fashion and style every year. Some of its past illustrious recipients include Reese Witherspoon, Carolina Herrera and Pierre Cardin.
Phillip Lim is the founder and creative director of 3.1 Phillip Lim, an eponymous label which he started in 2004. Since the founding of this label, Lim has gone on to be featured as one of Business of Fashion’s Top 500 “People Shaping the Global Fashion Industry” and awarded the CFDA’s Emerging Talent in Womenswear Award in 2007.
His first words of his acceptance speech mentioned his stage fright, but nothing could be further from the truth. A man filled with gratitude and love for his career and his place in the industry stood before us and he proceeded to spill all the advice and knowledge he’s gained over the years to an eager crowd.
Phillip grew up in Orange County, California, as the son of a seamstress. Throughout his childhood, he spent hours working with his mother and watching her process. Growing up with the thought that a piece of cloth can become anything you want it to be gave him the strength and courage to later drop out of business school, where he was enrolled as an Accounting major and transfer into Home Economics.
Expose your heart. If you expose your heart, people will be addicted to it. People will always remember it.
This degree later lent itself to his role within the fashion industry, as Lim grew to understand the importance of loving the naive, “appreciating the power of being vulnerable.” Through vulnerability, the best work can be produced as you have no expectation of your abilities. Vulnerability, according to Lim, is power. He also believes that this vulnerability can be translated into clothes that are powerful, dramatic and over the top. Through his designs, Lim marries this love for drama and personality with something that is, “pragmatic, practical and suitable.”
With Lim’s work, his goal is to make clothes that have a transformative power to the person wearing them. He understands that clothes must tell a story and mirrors this through his designs and collections. To Lim, clothes must create a better version of the person wearing them. “It doesn’t matter what you do, but it does depend on what you wear, how you put yourself out into the world through your clothes.”
Lim also emphasizes the importance of understanding the business industry just as strongly as you understand the world of fashion. Without a basic understanding of the business side of your label, your success will be limited. “Creativity creates business, and business affords creativity. They go hand in hand.” This is something Lim has kept in mind throughout his whole career, because he knows that you can’t be a successful creative without either a successful business partner or, at the very least, someone to guide and mentor you through the business aspect of your label.
However, the most important thing to Lim, when making your way into and through the industry, is heart and love for those around you. Perhaps my favorite moment of the talk was when Phillip says, “Expose your heart. If you expose your heart, people will be addicted to it. People will always remember it.”
As we transition into a new school year, remember this. Remember that if you put your heart and soul into your pieces, they will be recognized, applauded and adored.
Written by Kat Phillips
Photography courtesy of SCAD