A lot of things impress me about 3.1 Phillip Lim, but lately, what I love most about the young designer is his smart, modern use of texture. When your designs are minimal, as Lim’s often are, texture becomes important – it’s often the most striking design narrative of any given piece. That means textile and leather choices are crucial, and not all designers make the correct choices; cost cutting often affects material quality before all else. Read More…

Ugly as sin. Yeah, I said it.

I can see the appeal in most footwear trends, even if they’re not things I’d wear personally. As a critic, you have to be willing to expand your willingness to consider the merit in things outside of your own personal taste, and I take that seriously. I’d never give something a bad review just because I wouldn’t wear it; that’s not a design flaw, in and of itself. Read More…

I have a hard time finding sandals that I like during the warm months, and until I saw the 3.1 Phillip Lim Domina Sandals on Net-a-Porter yesterday, I couldn’t figure out exactly why that was. Everyone loses their mind over espadrilles and gladiator flats and all kinds of other things, so why not me? Simple: My wardrobe is entirely based on black and grey, while most hardcore summer shoes are anchored in a palette of tan and beige. Read More…

As far as footwear collections go, 3.1 Phillip Lim Fall 2011 is perhaps the very definition of “a mixed bag.” Within this single line, there are shoes I’d love to own, shoes I’d love to try on and shoes that I’d love to shoot into the sun, never to harass mankind again. But as long as there are enough of the former kinds, the latter really doesn’t matter. Read More…

The thing that I appreciate the most about Phillip Lim is that his shoes always hold my attention for more than the fraction of a moment that it takes me to decide whether or not I’m interested in most designs. Even if I may not like a particular design of Lim’s, his footwear is always something that I want to investigate further and think about for longer than most other shoes on the mass market. Read More…

When we first took a look at 3.1 Phillip Lim’s simple, modern take on the traditional Mary Jane, I wondered if the brand would continue to impress me with its footwear or if that particular shoe was just a singular flash of brilliance. Well, I should have known – just like Lim’s party dresses continue to intrigue and delight, his shoes show no sign of future disappointment. Read More…

If you had asked me a week ago if I thought that there was anything interesting left to do with a mary jane, I would have told you that there probably wasn’t. After one sees Miu Miu’s chunky 60s silk mary janes with white birds all over them, one tends to think that the style has reached its logical aesthetic limit. Read More…