Phillip Lim | Photo: But Sou Lai

NEW YORK, United States — “I always believed in making clothes with affordable prices,” said Phillip Lim, one of the many young designers to have emerged in New York over the past few years. But unlike his peers, when Lim launched his label back in the autumn of 2005, he made a conscious decision not to compete in the high-end designer category. Instead, Lim’s vision was to offer his customers beautifully made, well-designed clothing at a contemporary price point.

Lim’s fashion journey began with Development, a Los Angeles-based line he started with partners in 2000. But four years later, after relationships turned thorny, Lim walked away from the label. Soon after, a friend he had met in Paris convinced Lim to come to New York, just to ‘hang out’ for the week. That friend was Wen Zhou, who would soon become chief executive of Lim’s new brand and his new business partner in an entrepreneurial venture that is on track to turn over more than $60 million this year — not bad for seven years of hard work.

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Anya Hindmarch | Source: Anya Hindmarch

LONDON, United Kingdom — “I started my business when I was 18,” said luxury handbag designer Anya Hindmarch. On her gap year in Florence, Italy, she saw a bag that was all the rage among the cool Italian girls and she bought it. “I took it to London and everyone loved it,” she recalls.

The reaction, it seems, helped her identify a business opportunity. “I found a factory, had a similar bag made and took it back to the UK.” Her first break came when she persuaded Harpers & Queen to offer the bags to their readers, resulting in 500 orders. These initial sales sparked demand among the cult London stores of the time, and soon, orders came in from big New York stores too, including Barneys, Bergdorf Goodman and Henri Bendel.

Although success came early for Hindmarch she admits that it was a difficult time, replete with growing pains. “You don’t have the volume for the factories to give you much time. And the designs have to be the most special to win the customers over. Basically, you have to sweet talk and sell to the suppliers as much as to the customers,” recalls Hindmarch. “You have to be determined, beyond sense almost, to get through that phase.”

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Tze Goh detail | Source: Tze Goh

LONDON, United Kingdom — This month, the BoF Spotlight turns to Singapore-born, London-based designer Tze Goh, whom we first came across during London Fashion Week at Vauxhall Fashion Scout’s ‘Ones to Watch.’ show. In fashion, designers often combine multiple points of reference in a single collection to give their clothes a more novel and appealing context. But Goh takes a more tightly focused approach to his work.

“I don’t really understand why there are so many themes in a collection; there’s no real reason for that,” said Goh, who trained at the Parsons New School of Design in New York and Paris, before completing his MA at Central Saint Martins in London. “For me, fashion is all about changing the silhouette of a person.”

To achieve his minimal, shape-shifting vision, Goh purposefully restricts his conceptual inputs. “I typically have one or two ideas and I work within those boundaries to make sure that the result is focused,” said Goh.

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LONDON, United Kingdom — In the early days of e-commerce, fashion brands were hesitant about selling online for two main reasons: fear that online distribution would dilute exclusivity and suspicion that consumers would never buy luxury fashion they weren’t able to physically try on.

Nonetheless, in 2009, in the midst of The Great Recession, the online luxury market grew by 20%, a rate that’s expected to accelerate through the close of 2010, and online fashion retailers at both ends of the spectrum, from Net-a-Porter to Asos, the UK’s largest online-only fashion store, are reporting rapid growth.

But buying fashion online is distinctly different to buying consumer electronics or books from Amazon. Fashion consumers still like to try before they buy, even if that means ordering items in a few different sizes and returning the ones that don’t fit.

To address this issue, many online retailers believe in topnotch customer service and flexible shipping policies. “We are continuing to improve our best in class delivery and returns proposition,” said James Hart, e-commerce director at Asos. “But also, I’m always looking at any technology that can help people make purchasing decisions.”

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