Wen Zhou got her first pair of real shoes, the store-bought kind, when she was nine years old, a gift from her father, who’d traveled outside their small Chinese village. Four years and thousands of miles later, Zhou got her first job, packing and seam clearing at the garment factory where her mother worked on New York’s Lower East Side. Today, she is chief executive officer of 3.1 Phillip Lim.
From those three bullet points, one can infer of Zhou intelligence, grit, a superhuman work ethic and utter mastery over her professional life course. On the last point, she begs to differ. “I have a very philosophical way of thinking about people, about business,” she said. “Phillip and I are together because we were destined to be together. That’s just it.”
Consider destiny kind. In the 11 years since they launched the company as equal partners, they have garnered the respect of the industry while remaining independent, growing steadily through good times and holding their own through bad. Currently, 3.1 Phillip Lim has 16 freestanding stores and 450 points of sale around the world. Last year was a bad one across fashion; the company maintained its women’s and men’s ready-to-wear levels and
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