While the revolving designer door is now commonplace across European fashion houses, there’s less precedent for creative director transitions at New York-founded brands. But when Phillip Lim decided to depart his namesake label last November after 20 years, it created a job opening.
Michelle Rhee joined 3.1 Phillip Lim in April as Lim’s successor. In her head of design role, she oversees the brand’s ready-to-wear, shoes and accessories businesses; her first pieces created alongside the design studio will make their market debut in New York starting on 10 September.
“3.1 Phillip Lim was one of the brands in New York that made me feel like, ‘Oh, I could do this too,’” says Rhee. For her first interview in the new role, Rhee and I meet below the brand’s store on Great Jones Street in New York’s Noho neighbourhood, surrounded by stacks of shoe boxes. Upstairs, the team is busy styling and shooting the new collection. “As an Asian American, it’s inspiring. So it was one of the brands that really created love in me for New York fashion, and for fashion in general, when I was young.”
We’re joined by CEO Wen Zhou, who co-founded the brand with Lim in 2005. Zhou says she feels lucky to be embarking on this second chapter for the company with Rhee. When Lim spoke of setting a date for his departure last year, Zhou considered whether she would “semi-retire” with him and shutter the brand, or perhaps put it on hold.
“We talked about it. I had to ask myself what I wanted to do. And it still just feels right for me at the moment. I have so much passion for it, and so I’m going to let that guide me,” Zhou says.
If the show were to go on, she would need a new designer. She knew that Lim’s design team would mostly leave with him.
Zhou says that she wasn’t looking for specific designer credentials, but Rhee has a hefty resumé. Her first job after Parsons School of Design was with Marc Jacobs, where she spent three years as an assistant designer for women’s ready-to-wear. From there, she moved to Derek Lam and later became a senior designer at Area. (It was Lam, a supporter and mentor to Rhee, who ended up introducing her to Zhou.)
All three brands offered her different perspectives on how to design, and in 2023, she launched her own eponymous label as creative director and founder, specialising in tailored separates, coats and party dresses. While it’s still available to shop on its website, the brand is no longer in development. Her focus, she says, is now entirely on Phillip Lim. So what will the brand look like in Rhee’s hands?
“I’m not trying to disrupt the business or the identity of the brand, it’s about building on top of it, nurturing it, and bringing out the elements that are so important to us — craft, modern touch, femininity with an edge,” Rhee says.
Zhou moved the brand’s archive from its storage unit in Philadelphia to Long Island City, closer to the brand’s New York studio, where Rhee could have better access to it. She dove in, mining the early Y2K era aesthetic for inspiration. That the brand’s earliest design era is now trendy among younger consumers again feels like a sign right at the 20-year mark, as the company prepares for the next. Early designs spotted at the store fitting include a pink dress adorned with metal details, a snakeskin collared shirt dress and a leather peplum tunic. The brand’s target customer — a 30-something city dweller — also hasn’t changed.
Craftsmanship at a fair price is something Zhou regularly reemphasises as core to the Phillip Lim brand. Luxury has gotten too expensive; she believes that their customer should be able to find fashion they love without making sacrifices for quality. It’s gotten more difficult as the industry has shed talented artisans. “Craft is very limited now; labour costs are up. We used to be able to do more at a quality that is very hard to achieve now. Michelle and I are thinking about how we can bring those things back — hand beading, embroidery — at a price our customer can afford.”
The label is designed and sampled in New York and then fully produced in China. That alone presents challenges for an indie label, as the Trump administration’s tariff policy has resulted in a drawn-out retaliatory trade war with China, reaching triple-digit duties earlier this year. (It’s temporarily settled to 34 per cent on Chinese-imported goods.) Still, she has no plans to diversify the supply chain.
“I love making things in China. From a labour perspective, from the know-how and the craft, that is absolutely still in China,” Zhou says. “I call them my cousins and my aunties, these people who sewed our clothes for the last 20 years. This is their retirement plan. There’s no plan B, so we’re going to keep them.”
Zhou is proud that the brand has made it 20 years in New York as an independent label — it was part of the reason she decided she couldn’t walk away from it after all. The brand doesn’t disclose growth figures but is profitable, she says, and while it’s never taken money from outside investors, Zhou would welcome it. She would use the funding to “be louder”, she says, but she acknowledges that investors aren’t exactly chomping at the bit for fashion labels at the moment. The brand is working on ways to make its own noise: it started a TikTok account as well as a Substack, called “31 Hours”, where it will chronicle a day in the life of different team members or things to do in New York City.
Zhou says that she’s content for the brand to grow at a steady pace. But Rhee didn’t have a leisurely start. She says she hit the ground running, getting to work on the collection that buyers will view by appointment this market season. She designed an outfit for Olivia Rodrigo to wear on her Guts tour, and later that summer, designed a tennis kit for Venus Williams. There’s a lot of pressure on designer debuts, which will be the running theme of this season in particular, as new creative directors step into roles at major houses. While more scrutiny will be on the runway debuts (Rhee and Zhou aren’t ruling out the runway in the future, but decided to skip the schedule this season), Rhee is still mindful of how to carry on the Phillip Lim legacy while still marking a new era.
“A house is a house. But Phillip’s name is on the door, and so I really want to just honour and respect him as a person,” Rhee says. “And there is a huge responsibility. I want to do it with all the respect and to the best of my ability.”
Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.
More from this author:
Ssense files for bankruptcy protection under weight of tariffs
