NEW YORK — Downplaying her work ethic and from-the-ground-up experience, 3.1 Phillip Lim chief executive officer Wen Zhou told a group of soon-to-be graduates Wednesday morning, “I still don’t know what I’m doing.”
That was unfounded, considering she and the designer amassed $2.6 million in sales alone in the company’s first season 12 years ago. Zhou’s easygoing manner and straightforward answers went over well with students listening in to her Q&A with WWD executive editor Bridget Foley. The discussion was part of the Fashion Future Graduate Showcase, an inaugural event started by the Council of Fashion Designers of America and the New York City Economic Development Corp.
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In the Eighties, Zhou moved with her family from a village of 50 in China to public housing in New York’s Lower East Side and continued to live there until age 25. Speaking only Mandarin presented its own challenges in the U.S., and that was intensified by the fact that Cantonese was the predominant language in Chinatown. She went to work at the age of 12. “My parents, grandmother and I all worked at 54 Canal Street — the classic New York sweatshop. I cleaned seams
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