To celebrate New York Fashion Week, Phillip Lim is opening the doors of an immersive gallery experience, “A New York City Vibration,” to the public at the Lower East Side’s 199 Chrystie Street this weekend. The pop-up gallery serves as Lim’s second chapter of the brand’s overarching ode to New York City titled “Someday, Somehow, Somewhere,” which began within his pre-fall collection and is expanding into fall 2023.
“The last several collections have been an ode to New York. The goal is to show potentially in September, but until then, I want to do a stream of events that really are rooted in what is quintessential New York — thinking about what is New York, what’s special about it,” Lim told WWD about his decision to create a community-driven gallery boasting creative partnerships and collaborations.
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“Let’s take what we do, but not have the clothes front and center and instead invite an artist that’s not from the fashion world to take the liberties and lens it in a way that they would see through their eyes as context to New York City, hence the name of the activation. For me, I’m always trying to look for new angles — selfishly to inspire myself, because it’s dangerous right now as we get back into doing the same old things of putting out collections — so I wanted to do an event that felt experimental.”
To lens the fall collection (which will be featured within the space through a collaged series of printed photographs and an immersive video projection anchored by large-scale prints), Lim tapped Japanese, New York-based photographer Jiro Konami, whose works span from portrait studies to cityscapes with bright light flares and hues. “Konami’s collaboration with 3.1 Phillip Lim will showcase humanity, atmospheric elements and a distillation of the essence of the New York spirit — an immersive, emotional visual display,” a statement from the brand said.
“Jiro is an amazing photographer who I have wanted to work with forever. He captures really ephemeral moments of the city he calls home, which is perfect, because what we’re trying to do, too, is search for that vibration or new ideas and tension to bring out new conversations. I’m handing the collection over to him, he’s going to lens it and has 100 percent liberty,” Lim explained, adding the projection will feature a custom soundtrack of New York City-centric sounds “digitized into contemporary ambience” by Brooklyn-based producer Jon Jung of IT-XPO.
The activation will begin Friday evening with a private viewing for the brand’s community, VIP and media, followed by a public opening Saturday through Sunday (with exhibition details slated to launch on the brand’s website Thursday). The weekend event is presented in partnership with Farfetch Group’s Farfetch Platform Solutions, which has been Lim’s technology partner to power his brand’s e-commerce, digital marketing and global operations since 2019, as well as Seedlip, Johnnie Walker and Tanqueray.
“When most people think of Farfetch.com, it’s for the Marketplace, but we also have this b-to-b business unit, which is Farfetch Platform Solutions, where we take our platform we’ve built for the marketplace and white label it out for brands and retailers. Phillip Lim has always been a great partner of ours — it was about taking what they had built for the U.S. market and growing that international presence with our global logistics and looking at us as thought partners for how we expand that relationship,” Kelly Kowal, chief platform officer of Farfetch, told WWD.
“For us, this event was a way to express the partnership of how we work together. We’ve been long-standing partners and it really is bringing experience to real life. The way they think about their customer base — how they give a global experience in-store and online — so it made sense for us to do something together in this event space of bringing that technical and digital together in real life.”
Lim said the event certainly is not “a soulless marketing activation,” but rather a way to bring his community, as well as new demographics of people and partnerships, together while “cementing and confirming why we love to live here and are proud to be a NYC brand.”