Fashion designer Phillip Lim has teamed up with other Asian American leaders to set up the AAPI Community Fund on GoFundMe to support victims of hate crime
As part of the reporting for Tatler’s August cover story, we speak to Phillip Lim, founder of fashion label 3.1 Phillip Lim, who tells us why stopping Asian hate matters to him and how he co-founded the AAPI GoFundMe initiative to help.
Phillip Lim, who launched his eponymous brand in 2006, has been praised by critics in recent years as a member of the new wave of Asian American fashion designers. But he doesn’t enjoy the label. “I am often referred to as an ‘Asian designer’ instead of just a fashion designer. Why does my profession have to be profiled by my race?” he says.
Lim has experienced this sort of othering all his life, since long before the recent wave of Asian hate in the US that started to make the news in March and has seen dozens of people of Asian heritage killed, assaulted and harassed. But, he says, “hate” isn’t necessarily so extreme or newsworthy. “Whilst recently we’ve seen the devastating effects of violence, hate also occurs in microaggressions, othering, poor choices of words and all the misconceptions driven by the model-minority myth.” And, he believes, the backlash against Asians is due in no small part to the way former president Donald Trump and his administration blamed Covid-19 on the Asian community, using phrases such as “kung flu” and the “China virus”. “This caused so much damage that is lasting and it has clearly led to an increase in the violence in our community,” Lim says. “These violent attacks on Asian communities are hate crimes and a symptom of a larger issue rooted in systemic racism which is a direct result of the xenophobia and colonialism that has existed in America for decades.”
See also: Tatler's House Stories: Fashion Industry Insiders Talk Diversity And Representation